THE ORDER OF THE FAT DICKHEAD

"Iran has stepped up its protest over the knighthood awarded by Britain to Salman Rushdie... Britain denied that the award was intended to insult Islam."

It was an insult all right- to Rushdie. Maybe this nonsense still impresses foreigners, but to the British "knight" simply means "famous dickhead in his fifties" or "fat crook who donates to the Labour Party".

Sir Cliff Richard, Sir Jimmy Saville, Sir Elton John, Sir Bono... I could go on. Giving one to someone with talent and brains, rather than yet another ignorant blatherskite of the Ian Botham type, is most unusual, even if it wasn’t a deliberate slight.

"Everybody has a summer holiday.
Doin' things they always wanted to.
So we're goin' on a summer holiday
To make our dreams come true..."

It seems to me that if you award knighthoods for that sort of thing, the bar has been set pretty low. Unless you want to try to argue that Sir Cliff embodies the knightly virtues of wysedom, verite, humylite and swiftness.

The country has been going to the dogs for as long as I can remember. But sometime between the Cliff Richard knighthood and Prescott’s promotion to Deputy Prime Minister, I think we can say that we finally arrived at the dogs. And here we all are, at the dogs.

If you seek the dogs, look around you.