Lord Ringo would be better

In a quaint British custom – The New Year’s Honours List – Her Majesty has made Ringo a knight of the realm for services to drumming.

Lord Ringo would have been better. It sounds like a character in a fantasy film. ‘The dragons are at the gates, Lord Ringo!’

‘For services to’ is a euphemism for doing your job and getting rich and famous. Generous donors to the Tory party (or New Labour; or Old Labour for that matter) get honoured for ‘services to business’. Since the Beatles got the MBE there’s been a crowd-pleasing tendency to give meaningless titles to entertainers as well for ‘services to dance’ and so forth.

Workers at Tesco are not made Dames for doing their job – or ‘services to checkouts.’ I am still waiting to be made Lord Murphy for services to call handling.