Arise Sir Parky

<< Parkinson recoils at the news that even Judi Dench beat him to it

This week saw the announcement of the new Honours list - recipients included the newly-named Sir Michael Parkinson, who described the award as a "great honour". What he actually meant, of course, was "what took you so long? Wogan got one ages ago, and he's not even British! I've had to brown-nose a legion of talentless minor celebrities for this, and I've got to pretend to be grateful - you people make me sick". Memorably, Mick Jagger accepted a knighthood in 2003, which led to criticism that it really wasn't very 'rock and roll'. Another highly amusing Jagger fact is that, whilst living in a Chelsea flat with Keith Richard and Brian Jones, he still attempted to continue with his LSE business degree. One can only imagine the rows that must have taken place.

It's a shame that even 'anti-establishment' stars like Mick Jagger are prepared to accept honours from the royal family. Here at Knowledge Towers, we're in agreement that more celebrities should turn their awards down. The only problem is, they can only do it when they first hear about the honour - if they want to go public, they have to first accept it to get on the list, in order to turn it down - if you follow me. Some famous refuseniks include Alan Bennett, who turned down a knighthood, French and Saunders, who refused OBEs, and Lenny Henry, who also declined an OBE - but accepted a CBE. Guess the OBE was just too 'small time' for him. John Lennon is thought by many to have refused his honour, but in fact accepted and then returned it. There's just one problem:

An honour bestowed by the British monarchy cannot be returned once received.

This is a technicality really, as a public display of rejection does as much harm to the image of the honours as actually being able to hand the award back. Lennon publicly returned his honour as a protest against the Biafran and Vietnamese wars. Parky may be inclined to do the same - he may feel that after 20 years pretending to be interested in Paul McCartney's new material, he really should be made King.