A letter to The Guardian, illustrated

Catatonia, 1999:

Storm the palace

You can stick you obe
I'll sort out your bad Feng Shui
'Cos tourism is congestion
Tourism is congestion

Cerys Matthews, 2014:

"Sorry, did I say stick you OBE? I meant stick your MBE on my lapel. And I literally meant I'd sort out your bad feng shui - I've moved your animal statues into the money corners of the palace. Which is all of them. And now we can talk about a ticketing system to ease the congestion of tourism..."

Inspired by this letter from yesterday's Guardian:

Lovely photo of Cerys Matthews receiving her award at Buckingham Palace (Medal citizen, 22 November.) Would this be the same palace which we were urged to storm in the song on Catatonia’s album Equally Cursed and Blessed, the lyrics of which included the line “You can stick your OBE”?
Jim Naylon
Stonesfield, Oxfordshire

What the queen likes

We live in a strange age, where people have many different careers, but I think I'm right in saying that Cerys Matthews must be the first person to do the specific double of an FHM cover spread and an MBE.

(Although, presumably, that's trumped by Angelina Jolie's French FHM cover and an honorary damehood.)

Other musicians who will have to worry about hiring a posh includes Talvinder Singh Matharoo, who's got an OBE.

Darcus Beese, the president of Island Records, also gets an OBE for services to music, although giving an award to a major label exec for services to music is akin to giving Ronald McDonald a prize for services to cows.

Congratulations to PJ Harvey

Congratulations to PJ Harvey, on becoming an MBE. Twenty-five year career. A fitting reward.

On this basis, Adele should probably expect to get a letter inviting her to pick up an MBE in 2031.

What? What?

It's all yours, Tom Araya

In the week of the Kerrang Awards, it's hard to imagine of a greater honour that could be presented to a noisy-music-maker, but Chile have come up with a nice gift for Slayer's Tom Araya.

This:

Okay, not quite that, but he has been given the freedom of Vina Del Mar in Chile.

Araya was born there, and lived there until his family moved to the US when he was five years old. You'll note that this is roughly the length of time Ringo lived in his first home - clearly Chileans feel those early years are more significant than Liverpool City Council does.

Tom was quite sweet about the honour:

"I think it's awesome," said Araya during a press conference. "I'm kind of speechless; I don't what to say. They're probably gonna change the locks when they give me the key!

"You see other people receive rewards like that, but it's usually people of political status or someone that's really done something for the community or done something important," he added. "All I can say is thank you."

There is, of course, a risk that having said that Slayer "isn't important" Tom will have offended Slayer fans around the world.

[Vina Del Mar photo by Bracani...Antonio under CC-BY-NC-SA licence]

OGWT OBE

Congratulations - at being suckered in by the establishment, dudes to Bob Harris on his OBE.

Bryan Ferry is now going to have to work out how to look suave with a CBE pinned to his dinner jacket.

The remaining two Goodies - Tim and Graeme - get OBEs to match Oddie's at long last (The Funky Gibbon, which surely is the main reason for giving a prize to them, wasn't a one-man track.)

But, perhaps best deserved, and longest overdue, is the OBE for Bernard Cribbins. Yes, there are the novelty hits. But there's also this:

I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face

The Queen has chosen her favourites

I don't want to sound like Bufton-Tufton here, but surely if someone has made a conscious and deliberate decision to revoke their British Citizenship in favour of another nation, then shouldn't that disqualify them from returning to be a Commander of the British Empire?

And yet Graham Nash, who effectively told the Queen to sod off back in 1978, has been given a CBE.

I've not got a problem with people adopting other citizenships, and I've no particular beef with Nash. But if we are going to spend a silly fortune on giving people silly medals, surely we should do it with some sort of sense of logic. If it's worth doing, isn't it worth doing it properly?

John Cale - who has accepted an OBE - is at least properly Welsh. Simon Armitage, off of the Mark Radcliffe programme and poetry, has gotten a CBE. And Catherine Zeta Jones, the pop star - one week with David Essex at number 38 - has been given something, presumably to recognise the good work she's done helping the elderly over the last few years.

Staus Quo: Establishment chaps

It's not actually news that Status Quo are ardent royalists and tend to fawn when they stand down wind from anything from a Duchess upwards. But seldom has Francis Rossi been quite so explicit about it:

Rossi, dressed in a dark pinstriped suit, said: ''This is the most exceptional moment of our careers. There's no two ways about it.

''Live Aid was contrastingly very different and important and there was a great euphoric feeling on the day but nothing can make you forget this.

''It's part of the establishment which is everything that's been around us since we were little and it's something to aspire to.

''Whether you're a royalist or not you cannot take away what the Queen and the Royal Family do for us.''

... before knuckling his forelock and walking backwards in a half-crouch.

I suppose it's true. Even if you're not a royalist, you can't escape the millions wasted on keeping one family in total luxury and undermining the whole principle of democracy by having government carried on in the name of the monarch instead of the people. I expect that's what Rossi meant.

There's something a little odd in the Telegraph's piece:

Status Quo launched the first Prince's Trust concert in 1982 and three years later they opened the original Live Aid concert with Rockin' All Over The World.

The original Live Aid concert? How many have there been since, then?

Brighton honours its links with the Beatles

We do like the Brighton and Hove Bus Company's habit of naming buses after the famous and honourable amongst those who once made the city their home. They've just announced a new batch of names for the fleet on the five route (the one which I used to take to and from town).

Amongst the Ivor Novellos and Frankie Howards (no, the Albion groundkeeper, not that one, missus) is David Jacobs. Not that David Jacobs, either: this one is the guy from Hove who used to be The Beatles' solicitor.

Lydon: Rotten no longer

Needing some more coins, John Lydon and the boys have released a DVD of some Sex Pistols gig or other - it's always been about the money, hasn't it? So John Lydon is trotting round the press circuit again, trying to pretend he's still anti-establishment while the Sunday Telegraph pats him on the head. He trots through it all again - his hard early life, how terrible the Church is to him; the reason he quit I'm A Celebrity (the Lockerbie connection, of course) but not why he went on in the first place. There's a genuinely touching piece in the middle, when the interview mentions his late father, but it gets undermined by Lydon's insistence the piece doesn't mention him crying.

Oh, and he's sure he's going to get offered a gong:

'They're bound to offer me a knighthood. They can stuff it - those institutions are the Devil incarnate.'

Why are they bound to offer him one? There's surely very little room in the Venn diagram where 'ITV gameshow stooge' and 'knighthood' overlaps, and if they were going to dub him Sir Punk, wouldn't he already be trumpeting how he'd knocked back an MBE at least by now? It's typical of the empty noises - bragging about turning down something he's never going to be offered.

And the rotten teeth? Fixed, at the cost of ten thousand pounds. But not out of vanity, oh no no:

it wasn't vanity that sent me to the dentist after all those years. It was necessity. Ill health. All those rotten teeth were seriously beginning to corrupt my system. I was feeling incredibly ill. I was permanently poisoning myself with gum infections. And my gums were receding and I was starting to look seriously weird.

If it's not vanity, then why have such expensive work done, though? Come on, John, you've earned your money the hard way - comeback tours and real estate - at least don't feel shame in spending it.

Medals for all

It's the Queen's summer birthday, and so she's ladled out a bunch of honours, including a CBE for Michael Eavis who certainly deserves it for the work he's done for Glastonbury over the years. I do give the festival quite a hard time (a hard time we feel is equally deserved), and do feel it's a shame that the festival has shifted so far from its early ideals that the question 'should the man who organises Glastonbury be accepting an award from the establishment' would probably just get me looked at in a funny way. You do wonder if the event was still giving cash to CND he'd have accepted an award from a government hell-bent on replacing Trident so soon after showering depleted uranium down on the heads of Iraqi civilians, mind.

Also getting letters from the Queen have been:

Joe Cocker, who gets an OBE and a visit to the Palace sometime this year where, after an awkward pause, he'll have to say "No, Ma'am, I was A Little Help From My Friends, not Common People";

Emma Kirkby, classical soprano, who is now a Dame;

Barrie Humphries, who has released more than one single as Dame Edna - most recently, we seem to remember, The Theme From Neighbours - becomes a CBE;

Ian Botham - now Sir Ian - was part of the bizarre BeeGees related cricketing rabbit troupe The Bunburys, whose debut record, We Are The Bunburys is still, we understand, awaiting a follow-up.

Bill Pertwee, who's got an MBE, we're sure also once made a record (not counting the releases of Round The Horne and Dad's Army) - or did we just imagine that?

Noel Gallagher might be a little upset to be overlooked, but remember - there's going to be another slew of honours in a couple of week when Blair compiles his Lavender List, so there's still a chance, Noelie.

Bono gets a gift

Last week, Bob Geldof fumed at European leaders for having the temerity to celebrate the EU's 50th birthday while there were problems in Africa. We wonder if he'll have similar harsh words for his showbiz mucker Bono, who quite happily accepted his honorary knighthood yesterday from the UK government, despite the UK's failure to do anything much that it was supposed to in Africa.

We're guessing not.

Bono was his typical self - trying to pretend to be both modest and a good sport, and failing to do either:

He said: "You have permission to call me anything you want except Sir." But he did suggest alternatives: "Lord of lords, your demi-godness," he joked.

It's funny because he was pretending he only thinks of himself as a demi god.

It's not in Bono's gift to withhold the title Sir from himself anyway - he's not entitled to it, not being British, not even for tax purposes.