Forget about the rights and wrongs, the moral high ground and the financial hinterland. The key question is surely this: now that Fred Goodwin has been forfeitured, or whatever the word is, there is a spare knighthood floating around. Who should get it? Here is The Caledonian Mercury shortlist of six worthy candidates, drawn from all (well, most) spheres of public life.Geoffrey Boycott Many people – including the great man himself – appear to think he is already Sir Geoffrey. But he’s merely the same old, plain old G Boycott who topped the Yorkshire and England batting order for 25 years, often with a three-figure score against his name. Has there been a technically more accomplished batsman on these shores since – ooh, Boycott’s fellow Yorkshireman Len Hutton? No – and Hutton did officially become Sir Leonard. Boycott has also carved out a love him / hate him career in the commentary box, where he mixes trenchant opinion with insightful analysis and references to his grandmother’s ability to bat using a stick of rhubarb. But there is a less-loved side – the ground-emptying rate of run-scoring, and the ego-in-a-team-game imbalance that often made him look like a gifted man who put his batting average before the requirements of the match. Then there was the French court case in 1998, when Boycott, amid protestations of innocence, was convicted of assaulting a former lover – a verdict that led the Sun, until then one of his employers, to label him “Boycott the Brute”. Hmm. Boycott is perhaps too complicated and controversial, the highpoint of Headingley 1977 notwithstanding. Better think of Trent Bridge 1977 instead, and just give the knighthood to Derek Randall. Jerry Sadowitz Again controversial, but in a different way. In the week when Billy Connolly has been deemed the most influential British comedian of all time (which disgracefully airbrushes an excellent court jester from the mid-1400s), it’s time to direct some praise – and a gong – to the comedians’ comedian, one who makes Connolly look and sound like Derek Nimmo. There are at least two problems with this, however. One is that Sadowitz isn’t really British – he was born 50 years ago in New Jersey. He soon moved to Glasgow and attended Shawlands Academy (where the list of former pupils also includes Ian Brady), but his overseas origins might count against him when it comes to picking up Fred the Shred’s droppings. The other problem is this: Sadowitz would say in utterly uncertain and anatomically unambiguous terms where you could stuff it. Mind you, he might just play along for a while, if only for the chance to exchange pleasantries with her majesty and Phil the Greek. Now that would be a gig worth seeing. Jim Swire From one JS to another, of a completely different sort. Jim Swire already has a title – doctor – but he deserves a bigger one. He is the father of Flora, one of the on-the-plane victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988, and has worked tirelessly – and one fears fruitlessly – to try and establish the truth of what happened in that terrible event. Lockerbie and everything after is more obscured by governmental deceit and political smokescreening than almost any incident of terrorism – and, whatever one thinks about Dr Swire’s belief that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is not the guilty party, he deserves great credit for remaining the honest and humble man amid a sea of criminal dissembling and murky geopolitics. Against Dr Swire, in the current political climate, is that he was schooled at Eton – but his having been born in Windsor ought to make the investiture side of things go smoothly, in satnav terms at least. By rights he should get something with the word Nobel written across it – but Goodwin’s knighthood would do pretty well to be going on with. It would, at the very least, restore some credibility to a tarnished award. Michael Marra It’s frankly ridiculous that various luminaries of the music industry already have their knighthoods – Sir James Paul McCartney, Sir Michael Philip Jagger, Sir Elton Hercules John – while a man more talented than all of them goes unrewarded and unheralded. OK, so he might not provoke young girls into paroxysms of screaming, strut about the stage in a spangly jumpsuit or warble away at royal funerals, but Marra has written some of the finest, most perceptive songs in the past couple of decades, which he quietly performs – just him and his piano and his patter – at folk clubs and small venues across the land. He is Randy Newman meets Doctor John on the banks of the Tay – and right now he is almost certain to be working on a lyric about Dundee taxi drivers and fare-dodging. Most creatively talented person in Scotland? Well, he’s a candidate. Trouble is, as with many who deserve official recognition, he wouldn’t want it. This is a man, after all, who outflanked the tedious drum-banging, saltire-waving, Bannockburn-invoking hooha over the need for a Scottish national anthem by offering a different – and some would say more accurate – analysis of the human condition in these parts: “Hermless, hermless there’s never nae bother fae me / I gang tae the libry, I tak oot a book / And then I go hame for my tea.” Heather the Weather We’re talking knighthoods here, not damehoods. But it doesn’t look right to have a men-only shortlist – and so, in the interests of tokenism, there has to be at least one woman in line to benefit as Fred Goodwin is defrocked and burnt in effigy at Up Helly Aa. The question is, who? The choice is wide. Various Kirstys could be in line to curtsey (with Young a more popular choice than Wark), but even better would be the fabulously enrobed and even more fabulously named founder of the Kids Company, Camila Batmanghelidjh. Never mind charity work – she should get it simply for sharing a name with the heir to the throne’s missus and a Gotham City superhero. But no, there is only one worthy recipient. Heather Reid attained national-treasure status during her time reading the weather on BBC Scotland – the meteorological knowledge, the infectious enthusiasm, the fine head of hair, the endearing “has she maybe had a wee drink?” giggly wiggle. Since she left at the end of 2009 for the dull-sounding world of science education consultancy, we’ve had to put up with a mix of Judith Ralston (not bad, but not Heather), Stav Danaos (OK in a solid-and-exotic kind of way) and Cat Cubie (give me strength). Heather the Weather was the best Countdown girl we never had, and she fully deserves Fred Goodwin’s cast-off K. She should also be brought back forthwith to fix the weather – it’s been in a complete mess since she went. Tommy Sheridan Actually, when it comes down to it, there’s really only one place the knighthood should go. Fresh out of Castle Huntly, scourge of the bankers and all their class – The People’s Tommy might be subject to a gagging order to go with his electronic tag for the next six months, but giving him Goodwin’s knighthood would be every bit as eloquent as any tub-thumping speech on Argyle Street or the steps of the High Court. The obvious protocol problem – that he’s still serving his criminal conviction for perjury – could be turned on its head and used to highlight the incongruity of Goodwin losing his title despite never having been tried or convicted of anything. The law, some say, is an ass – and a Goodwin–Sheridan exchange deal could be used to illustrate the point. Given the extent to which the hard-left factions in British politics never really get anywhere in power-gaining terms, giving it a go with a knight as the head of whatever the party is called this year might just be the way to win over the floating lumpenproletariat voters and sweep away capitalism and all its trappings. The bold Sir Thomas could then make a great show of stripping himself of his knighthood in the name of justice and egalitarianism, and ensure that nothing is ever again brought into disrepute. Or maybe he could just have another go on Celebrity Big Brother.
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