British Prime Minister Gordan Brown just announced to the Joint Session of Congress that the Queen of England has extended an honorary knighthood to ‘Sir Edward Kennedy’. I don’t think Americans are entitled to use the term ‘sir’, though. My favorite story along these lines:
Keith Richards has criticised his old friend and fellow Rolling Stone Mick Jagger for accepting a knighthood.
“I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment when they did their very best to throw us in jail,” the Stones guitarist told the music magazine Uncut.
Richards was referring to his and Jagger’s 1967 conviction on drug offences, later overturned on appeal.
“Just as we were about to start a new tour, I thought it sent out the wrong message. It’s not what the Stones is about, is it?” he said.
“I told Mick, ‘It’s a … paltry honour’.
“He defended himself by saying that (Prime Minister) Tony Blair insisted that he took the knighthood. Like that’s an excuse. Like you can’t turn down anything. Like it doesn’t depend how you feel about it.”
Also amusing:
Marianne Faithfull said, that Jagger is ‘a tremendous snob who always craved a knighthood’. ‘I never heard her say that about me,’ [Jagger] says. ‘But I know she’d love to be a dame, more than anything else. But she’s not really dame material.’
Meow.
But it’s a nice honor for Senator Kennedy. It’s a nice gesture by the British.