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Rod McPhee: No dishonour in being populist
SO who's landed a knighthood or a damehood in this year's New Year's Honours List? Anyone we know? Hmmm, yes, there's Patrick Stewart and, well, that's your lot really.
Is that it? Is that the best we can do? As we wave goodbye to a dynamic and exhilarating decade, is the actor formerly known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard the personification of what made Britain great over the past ten years?
Most of the list is made up of a deserving number of charity workers, local heroes and community leaders who aren't widely known. Unfortunately there's an even greater number of civil servants, quango members and backroom government operators, many of whom will end up as sirs and dames.
It's madness.
Surely the New Year's Honours should be a national focus, a rallying point for all things fine about this country and the commonwealth? I don't know about you, but I'm just not feeling it.
In terms of established names, knighthoods and damehoods certainly shouldn't be dished out willy-nilly, but surely the way they're bestowed should at least follow some sort of pattern. At the moment the way they're allotted seems bewildering, and shrouded in mystery.
Why is it, for example, that if you scoop an Olympic gold you're almost guaranteed a knighthood or damehood when you return home, but David Beckham, who has been a massive sporting icon for almost 15 years, has to make do with an OBE given to him six years ago?
How come, if you're Kylie Minogue, you get an OBE while damehoods are invariably reserved for an equally successful opera star? And why do Shakespearean actors like Patrick Stewart often get made 'Sirs' while the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis are left without so much as letters after their name?
And here are some more famous Brits who've never gained the top honour: Damian Hirst, Simon Cowell, Anthony Gormley, JK Rowling, Joanna Lumley, John Galliano. Some of these hugely successful individuals – whether you love them or loathe them – have been unjustly denied any kind of honour, be it an OBE or an MBE.
I list this wildly varying litany of famous names not whimsically or to be crassly populist, but because if they did receive a knighthood or dameship it would at least make more sense of the New Year's Honours List.
It would offer some kind of recognition that you don't have to be part of the establishment to make something of yourself, that you can ascend to greatness rather than gain it through some long-standing entitlement.
At the heart of this, I believe, is the sense that being aspirational is a little bit vulgar. Somehow it's not terribly British, certainly not among the elite of society where this list appears to be formulated.
But surely in the 21st Century we should celebrate people who are successful in almost any field, not just those which have always been patronised by the upper classes. In the year 2011 wouldn't it be great to see a New New Years Honours emerge?
From naughty to plain mean
AFTER surprisingly little discussion or deliberation it seems consensus has settled on calling the next decade the teens.
There had be one or two other uncomfortable suggestions like just calling it 'the tens' or the deccies or something like that, none of which really tripped off the tongue.
Unfortunately the new title is particularly appropriate because, apparently, the recession means we now have to tighten our belts and brace ourselves for the lean, mean teens.
A depressing comedown from the naughty noughties. What's in a name? Let's hope not much.
Poll imposition
SIMPLY staggering, that was my reaction to watching Channel 4's Greatest TV Shows of the Noughties last week.
I really could not believe which programmes made it into this supposedly elite top 20 – Friends (a hangover from the 1990s) and QI (arguably a good show, but a defining Noughties phenomenon, I don't think so).
As for Grand Designs – what a classic, eh?
But the most unbelievable one had to be Top Gear coming out in first place – what the hell? And, of course, this goes right to the heart of the problem with shows influenced by public voting – the public don't always make the right decisions.
I simply don't believe that the legions of loyal fans of Top Gear felt that their fave show represented defining TV of the last ten years – they simply voted for it because they liked it.
It's the same story whenever most people win X Factor, they don't always top the vote because they were the best but because the audience felt a particular, often fleeting, allegiance.
Besides if everything were decided on sheer popularity then X Factor probably would have come first in the Noughties TV top 20 – and at least it would have had some relevance.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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