This being an Olympic year, a host of Team GB athletes now have a few letters tagged on at the end of their name.
Thus, we can look forward to Sir Andy Murray seeking back-to-back Wimbledon titles next year while Mo Farah has also been knighted.
Ewan MacKenna evidently wasn't called in to lobby against Farah in a pro bono capacity, as Christopher Hitchens was when the canonisation of Mother Theresa was being debated in the Vatican.
Also, we presume that Andy Murray's eleventh hour advocacy of Scottish independence a couple of years back won't come up in discussion when he meets the Queen.
Another sporting figure honoured is Michael O'Neill. This, we are confident in proclaiming, makes him the first ex -Shamrock Rovers manager to have received an honour from the Queen.
He gave his reaction on the IFA website where he said he'd accept the honour as a recognition of the team's efforts.
It’s fantastic and totally unexpected to be honest. In many ways I am just getting the recognition for what the team and the association have achieved in recent years.
My family are very proud and my family back in Northern Ireland are very proud as well. In many ways it hasn’t really sunk in yet, but it’s lovely when you get recognition – it is a proud day for me and all my family.
As usual, a few nominees have declined the honour. As was reported in the Guardian yesterday, Phil Scraton, the academic and author who was central to the fight for justice by the Hillsborough families, has declined the award.
In a statement, he said he was declining the honour on two grounds.
Firstly, that he could not accept an honour from those who had been so slow in delivering justice to the bereaved families of Hillsborough.
I researched Hillsborough from 1989, publishing reports, articles and the first edition of Hillsborough: The Truth in 1990.
Until 2009, and despite compelling evidence, successive governments declined to pursue a thorough, independent review of the context, consequences and aftermath of the disaster.
This changed as a direct result of the families' and survivors' brave, persistent campaign.
It led to the Hillsborough Independent Panel, its ground-breaking findings, new inquests and their crucially significant verdicts.
I headed the Panel's research team and was a consultant to the families' lawyers throughout the new inquests.
I could not receive an honour on the recommendation of those who remained unresponsive to the determined efforts of bereaved families and survivors to secure truth and justice.
And secondly, he has a general problem accepting an award that confer on him the title of 'Officer of the British Empire'. Scraton said that he was deeply critical of imperialism in his scholarly work and thus couldn't accept him an award which was "tied in name to the British Empire".
Finally, I could not accept an honour tied in name to the 'British Empire'.
In my scholarship and teaching I remain a strong critic of the historical, cultural and political contexts of imperialism and their international legacy.
Read more: The Big Balls Quiz Of The Year 2016
