I remember one Chief Officer (long since retired) who used to take the Committee through EVERY report word by word, even though they had received the reports days before. He would stop at the end of each sentence with words of explanation. His philosophy (which he never admitted to) was to grind everyone down to such a degree of boredom that they would agree anything at the end of it, just to get away.
The standing order that all meetings had to finish by 10pm was a godsend, otherwise they would have gone on until the wee small hours.
I now see my retirement pension as payback time for all those hours over many years spent in total, utter and complete boredom!
