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  4. The king is in the counting house
    Some folk have all the luck
    And all we get are pictures of lord and lady muck
    They come from lovely people with a hard line in hypocrisy
    There are ashtrays of emotion for the fag ends of the aristocracy

    “I wait for the day when they announce that they are going to publicly behead the Duke of Westminster in Parliament Square”

  6. That’s a beautiful piece of writing – explaining how whilst accepting may well contradict the views of his youth ( and still his view) – he wants to keep his Mam happy and honor his history. That’s what growing up is about.
    I am pretty much the same age as EC, with very similar viewpoints. I believe I would take the same view – for my Mam and Dad.

      • Elvis’s dad was a secret lemonade drinker – that’s all I know.

        PS. The only way I could honour my parents if I was in Elvis’s position would be if I rocked up fert’ gonging carrying a few hand grenades

        I think this “for my parents” thing is often part of it… but for many gongees there must also be an element of it saying to the people who teased them at school – especially teachers -.”How ya like me now, fuckers?”

    • It is elegantly put. But the line that I’m only accepting to keep my parents happy is the oldest one in the book for left leaning types wanting to accept an honour (and why not?) whilst dodging cries of hypocrisy.

      But good luck to him – he’s a deserving recipient.

  7. A more bizarre award in HM’s birthday honours list is Mathangi Arulpragasam, better known as MIA.

    A very smart cookie, and the fact that still she makes me go all wobbly at the knees is a bonus for me, but she’s spent her whole career sticking it to the man, so her MBE seems strange.

    Still, good excuse to listen to this again:

  8. Feargal Sharkey is OBEd too.

    Other bizarre awards – Andrew Roachford receives an MBE in recognition of providing the soundtrack to the opening of the Alan Partridge film.

  9. Of course, nobody knows what kind of music Liz and Phil really like. Behind locked doors, they may really enjoy some atonal jazz squawking. After a week of being polite to that doughnut, Trump, she must be in need of something very cathartic.

    I’d put good money on them going for some Rammstein.

  10. I think the honours system is a big pile of shite, particularly when you see them dished out amongst the elite and to party donors. ¬ ‘Sir’ Phillip Green for example. Yet I still get angry about who gets them and who doesn’t! It makes me laugh when apparent anti-establishment figures accept them ‘for their mum’. What a load of twaddle!

    • It could explain why David Bowie turned down an OBE and, later, a knighthood. His mother, Peggy, damaged from her own childhood and the stigma of being a single mother to Terry, Bowie’s older half-brother, was emotionally distant. He had a much closer relationship with his father.

    • I think the same but I’ve often wondered what I’d do if I was offered one (I won’t be!). I’d rather like to see behind the scenes at a ‘do’ at Buck House…. I’d probably end up not getting past the dress code bit! Ultimately I don’t think I could bring myself to accept anything from that mob… what if on the day it was presented by the pea-brain who’s next in line?!

      • I think it depends what it’s for. People who have done good public spirited stuff, fair enough. Dull civil servants who have done no more than rock up, keep their noses clean and take the pension, not so much.

        • It’s the ones in the latter category who are most keen.

          There is another lot: those who make a shed load of money or get richly rewarded in their line of work anyway, yet the powers that be think they deserve even more. I’m thinking Olympic gold medalists, actors, musicians….

          • I simply don’t get the concept of a prize for doing your job (musicians, artists,sportsmen, politicians, authors, actors etc and the classic central heating salesmen). We have awards where I work, some people get worked up about not winning, some put a lot of effort (not actually doing their job at the time – ie presenting what they’ve done in simple soundbites) in trying to win. I was invited to the annual dinner last year, didn’t have the appropriate clothes for the dress code (a suit) and didn’t ever get round to picking up the perspex ‘trophy’.
            I don’t want to be first, I just want to pass.

  12. Can’t be too surprised, Queenie’s not too hot on what constitutes the Greatest Generation.
    She genuinely thinks it’s her own. No, really!!!
    She’ll have more in common with Costello than Paul, Mick, Keith or Ray.

    • I think this week of all weeks, describing a bunch of layabouts who grew their hair and played some music as our “greatest generation” is… an interesting opinion.

      Never mind defeating the biggest and most horrible enemy we’ve ever had and then coming back to build a welfare state, here’s Herman’s Hermits!

  15. I think Costello stopped being a rebel several years ago now – Spike was maybe the last album that was anti establishment. It coincided with him hobnobbing with Presidents and film stars.
    Don’t have a problem with his OBE it’s his choice. No one else should have a problem with it either. I have more of a problem that he hasn’t announced any UK tour dates yet for this year.

  17. Surely it’s Declan McManus OBE? Was listening to some of his early stuff recently, his attitude towards women at that time, is pretty interesting. Not sure it would be as well received these days.

  18. Is it his attitude to women or his honest articulation/exploration of his own conflictions, insecurities and prejudices. There’s a difference – if we take him seriously as an artist (and a lyricist) – and I do. Same with the way Martin Amis beats up his male protagonists and lays bare their pathetic clinging onto some sort of machismo?

    • I think he has the respect of whole range of women in music. Emmylou Harris described him as the most generous person she had met. Roseanne Cash, Lucinda Williams, Larkin Poe all have worked with him and revere him.
      He has a chequered past regarding relationships but dont we all? Show me a paragon of virtue out there?

  19. I think he has the respect of whole range of women in music. Emmylou Harris described him as the most generous person she had met. Roseanne Cash, Lucinda Williams, Larkin Poe all have worked with him and revere him.
    He has a chequered past regarding relationships but dont we all? Show me a paragon of virtue out there?

  21. Nice to see SteveT In Dub again. 😉

    PS. “Man thinks his best ideas for lyrics come out of his least worthy thoughts” shocker. This stuff goes right back to Ovid. “Oh god, that’s a horrible thing to think, I hate myself… on the other hand, I could turn it into a doozy of a middle eight”

    Concluding his (brilliant) notes to the 2-disc reissue of Blood and Chocolate, EC ruefully ponders whether it’s worth making a mess of your life (esp. relationships) just so that you can write songs about it.

  22. I saw Billy Bragg this evening talking about his career and his new pamphlet.
    He said he turned down an honour, and was disappointed that Elvis had accepted one.

  23. Benjamin Zephaniah was offered an MBE a good few years back. He said it didn’t seem right for a person of African descent to accept an honour that had “British Empire” in it’s title.

  25. Given the preponderance of celebrity OBEs and MBEs these days, it’s fun to remember that this was not always the norm. Prior to the Beatles getting their MBE’s in 1965, honours weren’t awarded to Entertainers and certainly not upstart rockn’n’rollers (despite the amount of foreign currency they may have earned their country)

    One Col. Frederick Wagg, on hearing of them getting the award, returned not only his own, but also his 12 wartime medals and cancelled his Labour Party membership.

    “Decorating the Beatles,” he wrote, “has made a mockery of everything this country stands for. I’ve heard them sing and play, and I think they’re terrible.”

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