BOG STANDARD DEGREES

Soon celebrities will again be collecting academic honours to hang on their loo

walls. Mary Wakefield explains why

IN a few weeks' time celebrities nationwide will be feeling an extra little glow of smugness. The honorary-degree season is upon us again, and Britain's pop stars, footballers and television personalities should be on top form, buoyed up by another clutch of doctorates, laminated, framed, hanging on their lavatory walls where no guest can fail to see them.

In June, Yoko Ono will fly from America to receive a doctorate from Liverpool. The artist Gerald Scarfe will become a Doctor of Laws. The former Northern Ireland footballer George Best who struggled with exams in his schooldays, is to be honoured by Belfast University. The West Ham star Trevor Brooking will become Dr Brooking of the University of Essex. Even Prince Charles will be trekking up to Glasgow to collect his 11th honorary degree, in recognition of his contribution to education.

Oxbridge graduates needn't feel left out. Just remember Michael Jackson, thanking Oxford University for his doctorate earlier this year: 'Let us heal the world and blight its pain. God bless you all.' Why would Oxford want to confer an academic honour on a man who can say that without gagging?

When Cambridge University first started awarding honorary degrees, in the 16th century, it was to 'British subjects who are of conspicuous merit, or who have done good service to the state or the university'. So why are all universities choosing to honour high-profile names who have no previous connection with any university, let alone theirs?

If you remember seeing the photographs of Michael Jackson at Oxford on the front pages of most of the broadsheet national newspapers, the answer should be obvious. Ever since polytechnics were awarded full university status nine years ago, there have been more than 100 universities in Britain competing for the attention of bright sixthformers. And what normal 17-year-old will be preparing for her Ucca application by poring over university degree statistics? Ten to one, she will simply scribble down the first five names that have managed to pierce her mental fog of snogs and Marlboro Lights before heading down to the bike sheds for more of the same. By securing at least one well-known face for every shuffle of worthy professors receiving honorary degrees, universities can guarantee both column inches and street cred. A spokesman from Kent University was candid: 'We like to raise the university's profile, and this is as good a way as any. It also makes the day more fun for students if they can tell everyone they graduated at the same time as Joanna Lumley.'

The list of Britain's most successful collectors of honorary degrees tells the same story. David Attenborough leads the way with more than 20; the celebrity chef, Prue Leith, has seven; Joanna Lumley has a decent clutch, as do Sir Ian McKellen, Prunella Scales, Sue Lawley, Sir Bob Geldof, Sting and Lenny Henry.

Which prompts another question: why bother? Why do people who regularly make the rest of the world boggle-eyed with envy — by scoring spectacular goals or presenting cult television programmes — drop it all at a moment's notice to slog up to Glasgow or Leeds for the sake of an unconvincing honorary degree?

'The worst thing about hon degs,' wrote Philip Larkin, 'is that even if you make it clear that you're not going to "reply for the graduates" there's still an AWFUL dinner when you're standing next to Lady Somebody and an awful LUNCH and a standing TEA. And when standing makes your legs like perished elastic AS IT DOES MINE and when you can't hear a fucking word anyone says anyway As I CAN'T then such occasions fall short of pleasurable.'

Well, on he may whinge, but he didn't turn them down, did he? The universities have latched on to a winning scheme. Flattering famous names into co-operating to secure press attention is an old game, but one which succeeds time and time again, because public figures rarely cotton on to it.

During the two years I worked as a gossip columnist, I was constantly amazed by celebrities' lack of nous. Although it was common knowledge that the PR companies invited them specifically to attract publicity, all my attempts to engage Tara P.-T., Lady Victoria Hervey, Lord Lamont et al. in quotable conversation fell, routinely, on haughty ears: 'Why are you bothering me?', 'I have more interesting people to talk to', or just 'F— off'. Nothing can shake their conviction that they are asked to glamorous parties, hosted by people of whom they have never heard, simply because they are so damn special. Similarly, I suspect that the real reason why celebrities are showered with honorary doctorates will never occur to them.

One of the few to have refused an hon deg is David Hockney. 'This is the last one,' he said after receiving his fourth honorary degree, from Leeds, last year. 'It might sound grand to be four times a doctor, but what's the point? You can't write out prescriptions for your own drugs on this.' Even Hockney, who sensed the silliness of it all, was looking for the point from the wrong perspective.

Of course, for some public figures, such as Prince Charles, refusing would present more problems than accepting. 'Sometimes degrees just come through the post, so that's a done deal,' his spokesman tells me. 'Other times, when the Prince of Wales receives an invitation to accept an honorary degree in person, we realise that if he should turn it down it might provoke a story about him being dismissive. He is of course, however, very grateful for all these tributes.'

Prue Leith, a fierce competitor in the British women's hon deg stakes, understands the game, but participates willingly. 'I do know that the motivation for giving degrees can sometimes be publicity or column inches for the university,' she says. 'But another side to it is that I might have connections that will be useful to them, or be able to help fundraising. I admit, I keep all my honorary degrees, they're in my loo. It's a sort of shrine to the ego, but what can I do? I have no real university degrees, and it's the perfect place to put something you're both very proud of and slightly ashamed of yourself for taking seriously.'

One former hon deg collector with the right attitude was the immunologist Sir Peter Medawar. In his autobiography, Memoirs of a Thinking Radish, Medawar reveals how he set himself the task of trying 'to secure an alphabetic full house of doctorates'. He lists 23 universities that have so far conferred degrees upon him, adding, 'Purists (or as I prefer to call them, pedants) may object to my counting Exeter against the antepenultimate letter of the alphabet, and shrewd observers will have observed that Yale and Zimbabwe are unaccountably dragging their feet.'