For F**k's sake

[Guest]

Beckham 'in line for knighthood'


Staff and agencies
Thursday May 31, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

David Beckham could be in line to receive a knighthood, it emerged today.

The former England captain is said to be among those being considered for the accolade in the Queen's birthday honours and Tony Blair's resignation honours, to be announced later this year.

As well as his record as England captain, Beckham's claim to a knighthood is said to be bolstered by his work for charity and his role in securing the 2012 Olympic Games for London.

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The revelation emerged as the Cabinet Office today dismissed reports that Whitehall officials were seeking to block a knighthood for the football star. A spokeswoman said civil servants were not in a position to halt nominations and there had been no discussions of that kind.

Reports in the Evening Standard this morning suggested questions had been raised over a possible honour for Beckham because of his planned move to the USA.

An unnamed source was quoted as saying there was concern that Beckham's five-year contract with Los Angeles Galaxy might prevent him appearing again in an England shirt, shortly after his recall to the squad for next week's European Championship qualifier against Estonia.

But the Cabinet Office spokeswoman said the department - which oversees the honours process - did not recognise the claim.

Names are currently being considered for inclusion in Tony Blair's resignation honours list, as well as the Queen's annual birthday honours.

It is not known whether 32-year-old Beckham is among them, but speculation is rife that he may be about to add to the OBE he won in 2003.

Under a system set up following a 2004 review of the transparency of honours awards, any sporting stars nominated for gongs are scrutinised by the sport honours committee, chaired by the former chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board Lord MacLaurin.

Also sitting on the committee are leading figures from the world of sport including Dame Tanni Grey Thompson, Sir Matthew Pinsent, Tessa Sanderson and Sir Bobby Robson, as well as a senior civil servant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Names approved by this body are passed on for review by the main honours committee, chaired by the head of the home civil service, cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, which agrees the final list for submission through the prime minister to the Queen.

A knighthood for the Real Madrid star would make his former Spice Girl wife Lady Beckham - a title she has made clear she would relish.

She told the BBC last year: "I'd love that, that would be quite fabulous. It's just so camp, it's wonderful isn't it? Lady Victoria... that would be quite amazing."

http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2092444,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=5

[thesilverfoxlfc]

There like sweets and they mean **** all, why should people get them now? If they do deserve them then at the end of there career and a few years after they retire.

This goes for Stevie as well why did he deserve one at this stage

[MrMichael]

Oh dear

[Maestro]

As well as his record as England captain, Beckham's claim to a knighthood is said to be bolstered by his work for charity and his role in securing the 2012 Olympic Games for London.

Erm....

[Revo]

i hate all the knighthoods and titles and the bull**** that goes along with it, but i have no problem with beckham being recognized. he has been a great ambassador for kids

[Marshy]

'Sir' Kenny Dalglish???

**** the corrupt honours system - Yet another potential knighthood for our countries favourite establishment football team, make no mistake it's primarily because he was in a successful Utd team alongside his charity work he will be possibly getting knighted for, a Sir David to go alongside Sir Matt, Sir Bobby and Sir Alex while the most successful club in our countries history awaits its first (on the field). This country is dying a slow horrible death in my opinion.

[Shaggy]

This story was doing the rounds the last time they were handing out confetti knighthoods. It's only a matter of time.

[Mumsafan]

I don't have a problem with him getting one. Bigger idiots than him have been recognised.

[Reece]

If any footballer who is still playing deserves it, then it is Beckham. Well actually, there may well be others who are more deserving who don't get the limelight that Beckham does, but still, bearing in mind the current climate of easy knighthoods I wouldn't have a problem with it.

[anfieldpurch]

What good has not nob done?

I mean give me one thing that is good for this country he has done

I think of 1 good NOT fame hunting thing hes done and thats care for little kirsty who sadly died but he truly cared there.

Newsflash : OXford unveil new dictionary
Knighthood-An award to commemorate being a show off cockney ******* with a wife who cant sing. A person who was once a legend at football but now plays for fame and money not for the enjoyment. (example David "goldenballs" Beckham)

[Johnny]

What good has not nob done?

I mean give me one thing that is good for this country he has done

I think of 1 good NOT fame hunting thing hes done and thats care for little kirsty who sadly died but he truly cared there.

Newsflash : OXford unveil new dictionary
Knighthood-An award to commemorate being a show off cockney ******* with a wife who cant sing. A person who was once a legend at football but now plays for fame and money not for the enjoyment. (example David "goldenballs" Beckham)

Unicef???

[tommyg]

Can 'knights' do anything special that normal citizens cannot? or is it just a fancy title

[loco_law]

Can 'knights' do anything special that normal citizens cannot? or is it just a fancy title

Posh Spice.

[kemm1]

This story was doing the rounds the last time they were handing out confetti knighthoods. It's only a matter of time.

True Beckham getting the knighthood is a joke, here's a god article on that:

http://sport.independent.co.uk/football/comment/article2606484.ece

James Lawton: By all means give Beckham a knighthood - for self-promotion, not real achievement
Published: 02 June 2007

Whatever the pyrotechnics produced by David Beckham in the friendly showpiece at Wembley last night, one certainty was always going to be hidden by days of acclaim that lacked only a full-scale ticker-tape parade. It was that there would be little or no reference to his last performance against Brazil, one that mattered in real football terms.

Remember it? Quarter-final of the World Cup, Brazil, a vulnerable team for whom Rivaldo had found it necessary to stoop to the most outrageous cheating in a group game against Turkey, one goal down beneath the blazing Japanese sun, the door open sufficiently for all of England to believe that this was the nation's best chance of winning the greatest prize in football for 36 years.

A time, surely, for English players of destiny, if ever there was one, but do we all not remember with a wince what happened next? It was the country's great hero jumping so high out of tackle the Olympic record was imperilled, Ronaldinho dancing down the field before delivering a killer pass to Rivaldo, 1-1 ... door closed, even when Ronaldinho was sent off after he had deceived a tearful David Seaman not with a cunningly flighted free-kick, but, England insisted, a pure freak of nature. Beckham, naturally, was Seaman's chief consoler - bang in centre screen.

You might say it is cruel and petty to resurrect that moment in a week when everybody has gone out of their way to pay homage to the man who blubbed and gave up the England captaincy unilaterally last summer after his fifth largely innocuous appearance in a major tournament. But then, in the real world, any truthful accountancy of achievement is based not on image, not on a handful of decent performances at the end of a season, but the long run of a professional life's work.

Why, though, go back to a point which when ventured here in the past has provoked offers of psychiatric help? Because the problem really isn't David Beckham, a self-advertiser on the eternal make. It is a culture which responds as readily as one of Pavlov's dogs to the often clever promptings of the king of Celebrity Inc's football department.

It is possible to ignore most of it, especially the coarse banalities of Big Brother, Sir Alan Sugar and the rest of the dreary parade of reality shows, but sometimes we reach a point when the madness is simply too much, when values are screwed up in such a way that there has to be a cry of protest.

The strengthening rumour that David Beckham will be knighted - that he will get the nod from a government in which he would surely have flourished as a senior minister of spin - is such an example of dire provocation. Knighthoods have been devalued so relentlessly in recent years that one handed to David Beckham by Tony Blair would have the one merit of perfect symmetry: who better to acknowledge an artist of hype than the grand master?

It is dismaying enough that the odds have apparently shortened dramatically on Beckham being told to "Arise, Sir David" - at the age of 32 - but what can we make of plain Mr Jack Charlton's assertion that he will be one of the first to applaud if it happens? A generous statement spanning the football generations? A touch of satire by the rugged countryman? Or one of those light-headed moments which once used to regularly confound his brother, Sir Bobby - most notably when, soon after winning the World Cup, he told a national television audience that he carried around a little black book with the names of players on whom he was planning to wreak physical revenge? Let's be generous to the old and often mischievous warrior. Let's place his approval of a Beckham knighthood somewhere between categories two and three.

Most members of Jack Charlton's generation of authentic achievers will no doubt keep their own counsel on Beckham's apparently now inevitable honour. Jimmy Greaves, bravely in that he might be accused of sourness because his own magnificent career has received not even a passing glance from Downing Street down the years, has spoken against. The late Alan Ball might have been wheedled into some acid aside on the subject of Sir David. He could have spoken for himself, Nobby Stiles, George Cohen, Ray Wilson, and Roger Hunt. They went to the palace to receive their MBEs - the bottom rung of the honours system sometimes accorded to dutiful lollipop ladies - 34 years after winning the World Cup.

When Her Majesty presented Cohen with his medal, she said, "It's been a long time." Cohen, briefed by the master of protocol, nodded politely but later he reflected, "I could have told the Queen that, although we were very happy to receive the honour, in truth we felt it was a proper and necessary thing, it was not as though for one single moment down the years we had ever felt unfulfilled.

"We had something you couldn't mint, and still less dispense in any honours list. We had knowledge of ourselves and something we had achieved, which would hold us against the worst of our days. Of course, it did not provide any proofing against worry or disappointment, or even despair. It didn't remove the possibility of a little envy at the way our livelihood had become awash with what we might feel, in our grouchier moments, had become easy money indeed.

"It wasn't such a great help to me when I was twice told that the cancer had come back - or when I had to pick up the broken pieces of my life without the all-enveloping reassurance and peace that comes with a shot of morphine.

"No, real life is not so accommodating. It tells you that the shelf life of euphoria can be brief. But then sometimes it gives a gift which cannot be taken away. Only 10 Englishmen alive [nine now] know what it is like to win a World Cup, and sadly our number do not appear under imminent threat of invasion, judging by the tournaments in Japan in 2002 and Germany last summer. Having an MBE, quite honestly, didn't affect our sense of achievement too much, but it was nice to have. It took away a rankle, a little tug of resentment which nobody needs."

No rankles or resentment for the putative Sir David, of course. Just, presumably, a surge of satisfaction, underpinned so strongly this week, that he has won most things any man would want: riches beyond reason, almost universal applause, and now, it appears, elevation above the common subjects of the Queen. Pity about that tackle, though.

[slimbimjim]

Absolute bollocks. Why the **** are people getting knighthoods for doing their over payed jobs?

It's people like firefighters that should be getting them. Putting a bit more than their fifth metatarsal on the line every day.

I have nothing against Bekham per se but the dickheads who do not recognise that difference between people who are famous for being important and important for being famous.