I happened to be listening to Today in Parliament last Tuesday, and there was a story about the paperless office.

In order to reduce the cost of all those mounds of order papers, the Lords are going digital, and using tablets and electronic versions instead.

Now I know the paperless office is one of those 21st-century eldorados. It will never happen, but it makes managers feel better.

Excellent, I thought. It’s nice to see the Upper House embracing modernity.

Then came the next topic.

At 2.30pm the Lord Bishop of Birmingham read prayers.

According to Hansard this took all of six minutes. But this was merely the warm-up act to what the official journal calls “a humble address” by Lord Hill of Oareford.

“Most gracious sovereign”, it began, “we, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to congratulate Your Majesty, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, their Royal Highnesses (that’s enough royals - Ed.) on the birth of a son...”

And just to underline the point, the address concludes with an assurance of “continued loyalty and devotion”.

Equally fulsome noises were then made by Lady Baroness Royall of Blaisdon.

There was then another dose of the Bishop of Birmingham, and the whole affair was wound up at 2.46pm, “nemine dissentiente”, which (if your Latin isn’t up to it) means “no one dissenting”.

So that’s the Upper House for you. Second gear tentatively forward into the 21st Century, and then fast reverse back into the 18th.

Setting aside the possible inaccuracies here – can anything issuing from Westminster be said to be “humble”? – and the liberal scattering of capital letters, I find the whole address full of cloying anachronisms.

Whatever you think of the royals - and I recognise that Her Maj is currently riding the crest of a popular wave – is there really any call for such obsequiousness ?

As far as I’m concerned, a humble address is somewhere in Ladywood or Castle Vale.

* Dr Chris Upton is preparing his head for the block at Newman University Birmingham