New Year's Honours : Strictly John Sergeant made a Dame?

By George Tyndale on Dec 24, 08 09:42 AM

I'm sure that cyclist Chris Hoy is a very decent bloke. He is certainly very adept at riding a bike.

And if you accept that the BBC Sports Personality of the Year can be a representative of a sport that is of no interest at all to 99.9 per cent of the population then he was, no doubt, a worthy winner of that accolade.

But the suggestion that Mr. Hoy, winner of three gold medals in Beijing, should become Sir Chris in the New Year's Honours is plain daft.

Just as barmy, in fact, as the decision to make Kelly Holmes a Dame for winning a couple of races in the previous Games.

But, of course, having set that precedent in gong-giving then something has to be done about the dozen or so individuals - most of whose names we have now all forgotten - who brought back those 18 gold medals last summer.

Not least of these is Rebecca Adlington who, like Dame Kelly, also won two gold medals and who also broke a world record into the bargain.

And if an Olympic gold automatically means a New Year gong, then what about Lewis Hamilton and his Formula One World Championship?

The real problem with the devaluation of the Honours system is, of course, that the awards have long since lost any connection with how much the recipients deserve to be recognised.

Honours are now distributed purely on the basis of how much each gong can be used to improve the image of the Government, to demonstrate how in touch 10 Downing street is with popular opinion.

Which is why, following the success of Strictly Come Dancing, Bruce Forsyth will almost certainly get a knighthood at the age of 80.

In fact, given the that the People's Honours have become so cheapened and trivialised it can surely only be a matter of time before the final decision is put to a public BBC TV vote.

And given the mess they can make of organising phone-ins we could end up with all kinds of surprises.

This year, for example, John Sergeant would almost certainly have become a Dame.