Kevan Christie: He may have been made a knight '“ but Kenny will always be a king
The latest cause of one’s ire being provoked is the forthcoming New Year’s honours list which has reminded me of the Queen’s Birthday Honours last June – where Scots football legend Kenny Dalglish was finally given a knighthood.
Now, of course I know the honours lists are nothing more than an archaic relic of an imperial past and the last bastion of the British Empire, dating back to 1765, as a quick glance of any newspaper comments section will tell you – but I was chuffed to bits that King Kenny was finally being rewarded.
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Hide AdHowever, any fleeting joy quickly passed as I came to realise it was at least 25 years too late – and then I remembered Billy Connolly only got knighted in October 2017, (nine years after Michael Parkinson) to pour some petrol on the fire.
All was not well.
This led me to do a quick tally of those less deserving than Sir Kenny and Sir Billy who have been honoured over the years, including diddy sportspeople, dodgy bankers and that guy from Star Trek: The Next Generation, not the real one with Spock and Captain Kirk.
I nearly crashed the Toyota Auris (2011 plate) going home over the Queensferry Crossing as my sense of injustice began to mount at this national disgrace.
For people of a certain vintage Kenny Dalglish and Billy Connolly are Scotland.
Dalglish was honoured in recognition for his services to football, charity and the city of Liverpool after a long campaign. Back in 2011, former Walton MP Steve Rotheram campaigned for the former Liverpool manager to be Sir Kenny and tabled a motion in the House of Commons which was signed by 13 MPs.
He was a veritable colossus as manager of Liverpool FC during the Hillsborough tragedy, providing support to a community under attack from the worst excesses of the Thatcher government and a right-wing press who considered the average football fan to be scum.
Sir Kenny attended many of the funerals for the victims, including four in one day. He was already a king but proved himself to be a saint at considerable cost to himself and his family in terms of the mental anguish they suffered.
The 67-year-old Glaswegian was said to be “embarrassed” when he heard the news of his knighthood.
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Hide AdBut the image of Kenny Dalglish I and thousands others will always carry is the look of sheer joy on his face every time he scored a goal “and could he play”.
Sir Geoff Hurst was knighted in 1998 for services to football.
He’s famous for scoring two goals and hitting the bar for England in a World Cup Final back in 1966 – you may have heard of it – and owes his knighthood to a Russian linesman.
As for Connolly – well they should have marched him up to the palace for his award after his sublime 1985 show, An Audience with Billy Connolly. I can imagine the panic when the honours committee realised they’d missed this impressive pair of Jocks. Perhaps there was a spelling error, as any junior reporter will tell you both surnames are easy to get wrong – but they were more than likely overlooked.
Allow me to bring a little bit of perspective to my rant.
First off, I’m talking about men only here – knights, not dames.
Personally, I feel every Dame deserves her title from Judi Dench to Emma Thompson and Edna Everage along the way, all thoroughly merited – nothing to see here.
What rips my knitting is the sheer number of non-entities knighted for not doing very much and certainly not for winning battles or discovering cigarettes and tatties in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh.