In the immortal words of the late and very great George Harrison, ring out the old, ring in the new! Ding-dong indeed!
The old year came to an end with the unsurprising news that I did not earn a gong in the New Years Honours List! There was no reason why I should get one, to be honest, but then why on earth did Joan Collins become a Dame? For services to soft porn? For being a long term tax exile? For being a long term supporter of Margaret Thatcher? Hmm. I think we’re getting somewhere now. Dr Simon Campbell becomes Sir Dr Simon Campbell after giving the world Viagra (keep up, folks!) and ‘Lord’ Paddy Ashdown becomes a Companion of Honour for being a pompous prick. (Did you spot what I did there?)
My local newspaper announces that a dozen people who live in and around Bristol have won gongs from Her Majesty and there are certainly some deserving winners. I am not assure about the MBE to a senior executive at the MOD for services to defence, which is to say that he gets an award for doing his well paid job. On that basis, why have the staff at our local Greggs not been at least knighted for services to pasties? Give me a decent pasty over a nuclear weapon any day of the week.
I suppose that is the thing that grates to me. I purr with admiration at those wonderful people who carry out voluntary work and then get a reward, although many more don’t, but I never quite understand why actors, sportsmen and top civil servants get gongs for doing what they are paid, often huge sums, for doing? I read that James Corden, someone I find as amusing as a burning orphanage, got a gong for his services to showbiz but also his charity work. Well, yes: a lot of celebrities do charity work, not least because they have so much time on their hands. If you’re a Royal, charity is pretty well all you do, so why not get the Queen to give awards to members of her family? Arise Sir Bill Windsor!
There will certainly be some great people in the long list and I congratulate them. Where we live, there are senior citizens who, every morning, go round collecting litter. Some of my best friends, as the saying goes, raise huge sums for charities and better still are active in helping people. They don’t go round asking for awards and reward but maybe if they became actors or telly commentators they might stand a better chance!
So good luck to Dame Joan Collins and thanks for The Stud and the Bitch, in which she appeared naked for much of the time. Naturally the nudity was not the reason I went to the cinema. I like a good story line.
