monarchy

Well, it’s that time of year again. Var­i­ous celebri­ties (and a few de­cent peo­ple) get on their knees in front of the Queen to be em­bar­rassed with a title that de­rives re­spect from our awful colo­nial past. Fancy a few extra let­ters after your name? Wor­ried that ‘BA’ alone might not se­cure you a life­time of rich­es and re­spect?

Don’t worry – we’ve got you cov­ered. Fol­low these few easy steps and you’ll be pros­ti­tut­ing your­self to an elit­ist, un­elect­ed es­tab­lish­ment in no time at all:

Be a ‘tire­less’ cam­paign­er for some­thing

This doesn’t mean de­vot­ing your life to some­thing that wouldn’t make you a mil­lion­aire. God for­bid! Do a cou­ple of ben­e­fit gigs. Record a mes­sage of sup­port from your sec­ond study and tell the pub­lic to dig deep. Do ad­verts for a su­per­mar­ket that sup­ports sav­ing the pan­das but try not to men­tion that they also ben­e­fit from en­slav­ing the Chi­nese. Tweet about it. That’ll do the trick.

Show your face every­where

So you once front­ed one of the most in­flu­en­tial British rock bands in liv­ing mem­o­ry? Now it’s time to make every­one ab­solute­ly sick of you. Norovirus style. To se­cure the knight­hood, you’ll need to sing the one song peo­ple can vague­ly re­mem­ber en­joy­ing at every pub­lic event for the next two decades. And no – Gary Bar­low – in case you’re read­ing this (I bet you are) this isn’t a joke about you. You’re never, ever get­ting a knight­hood so please, please, fuck off.

Be in the right place at the right time

Win a medal in Lon­don. Be a banker be­fore the fi­nan­cial crash. Make a break­through in physics whilst peo­ple are still smit­ten with Brian Cox. Tim­ing re­al­ly is cru­cial. Ho­n­ours are very much top­i­cal and a life­time of hard work will just not cut it. Some knowl­edge of the cul­tur­al zeit­geist es­sen­tial here. If your ho­n­our can cap­ture the pub­lic mood, you’ll offer the monar­chy at least an­oth­er ten years of un­de­served pop­u­lar­i­ty. Her Maj will be knock­ing at your door in no time at all.

Slag off the monar­chy at every op­por­tu­ni­ty

This shows courage if noth­ing else and the fact they have no right of reply makes them easy tar­gets. It seemed to work for Cherie Blair so might be worth a try. I await my in­vi­ta­tion to the palace.

This is no means a fool-proof guide. If in ten years time, you’ve fol­lowed it re­li­gious­ly and still had no luck per­haps it’s time to ask your­self if you’ve made the req­ui­site num­ber of ap­pear­ances on The Jonathan Ross Show. If you and Jonathan are best mates – then per­haps that’s the prob­lem.

Maybe it’s time to stop chas­ing the im­pos­si­ble dream of being so close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with a once mighty em­pire. And maybe, just maybe, you should stop read­ing this cyn­i­cal tripe and get on with some ac­tu­al work. Who knows? Some­day, you might just be ho­n­oured for it.