Well, finally the news is out there. Late last night, details of my award of an MBE became public knowledge. I cannot begin to tell you how hard it has been not to share this news, except with my partner that is, but now it’s out there. If you go to the Government website, Bristol Live and the BBC, you will be able to pick out my name. It is a huge honour.
I did not ask for, nor expect, a gong for simply doing my job. Nearly 40 years of public service, followed by nearly a decade in the charity sector, the last two and a half years of which have been volunteering at a food bank.
At times, it was a hard slog, trying to hold down a job while living with severe clinical depression and, it later transpired, a lifetime of ADHD, but for the most part I did my best. Looking back, I am proud of the job I did, particularly in the later stages of my ‘career’.
I acknowledge there are people who are far more deserving than me. That includes just about everyone who works for the emergency services and serves in our armed forces. In truth, I have been honoured for doing the job I was paid to do and for choosing to volunteer for a charity.
Finally, I would like to thank those people who nominated me for a gong. It was wholly unexpected and when news of the honour arrived, you could have knocked me down with a feather.
Not that any of this has really happened. Quite rightly, I have not been given an honour for simply being paid to do my job or anything that has happened since. My name doesn’t really appear alongside Loyd Grossman, who has been given a knighthood, I think, for appearing on ‘Through The Keyhole‘ (one for the teenagers, there) and flogging curry mixes, The Rt. Hon. Ranil Malcolm Jayawardena for being an MP and Alan Titchmarsh for making gardening shows on telly. There are literally thousands of people who deserve honours more than me. I am not a jealous or bitter man. Not always, anyway.
The UK honours system is what us experts refer to technically as a load of old shite. Sure, plenty of amazing people are rewarded, usually with the more lowly honours, like the BEM and the MBE, but many more aren’t. I celebrate knighthoods for the former England football manager Gareth Southgate, who has restored pride to the national sport and taking us to the very brink of success and for Stephen Fry, for services in a number of areas, but particularly in my view his tireless services to mental health. He has been president of MIND since 2011. The aforementioned Mr Titchmarsh is appointed an OBE, as is motor racing commentator Martin Brundle (for asking banal questions of drivers and celebs on the starting grid before F1 races, presumably?), but 103-year-old World War Two Mosquito pilot Colin Bell, is only given a British Empire Medal (BEM) for charitable fundraising and public speaking. Well, he was a pathfinder with 608 Squadron and survived 50 bombing raids over Germany, so not in the same class as the others, eh? I suppose this probably illustrates the idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies of the honours system or one of its main flaws: who and what do we value most?
I’ve often daydreamed about what I’d do in the unlikely event I was offered an honour. Having been a guest of my best friend when he received his MBE at Buckingham Palace, I reckon I’d be a total hypocrite and accept it. Sitting a few yards away from Queen Elizabeth II and just in front of Christopher Lee, as he awaited his honour, was one of the most surreal and mind-blowing experiences of my life. As I am going to die gongless, and couldn’t really care less whether I do or not, my hypocrisy is merely hypothetical. However, I do like to point out I can be as shallow as the next person.
That said, I hope the great and the good enjoy their publicly funded day out with either King Brian, Prince William or, if their luck is really out, Princess Anne or Prince Edward. The not so great and the not so good perhaps less so. Doubtless their gurning faces will appear in the red tops, showing off their Empire medals and life will go on.
Many people call for the whole honours system to be reviewed and overhauled. But into what? I reckon there are millions, maybe even tens of millions, of people who deserve honours, as much if not more than those in today’s list. Every doctor, every nurse, every hospital porter and cleaner, for starters. How do you reward all of them? My simple answer would be to pay them properly, but that’s another debate altogether.
Knowing I’ve done something useful or have helped someone is all I need to know these days. And no gong will ever give me the same feeling of satisfaction as when someone leaves our food bank with an emergency parcel of food and toiletries. If my raison d’être in life was to get an honour for doing what I got paid for or something I want to do, I’d probably be better doing something else.
