Griff Rhys Jones was flattered by his honorary degrees – until he was publicly humiliated
This is a bit mortifying. But I do deserve it. Around 20 years ago, I started getting offered honorary degrees. And I started accepting them. They were local ones at first. Not ivy-clad cloisters but – what shall I call them? – ‘Recently established seats of learning’: once polys or colleges of car maintenance. All fully understandable. After all, I had opened a few fêtes in the district. I was a local somebody. And these events were as harmless as fête openings. I would roll in, don the Harry Potter robe and, looking like Margaret Rutherford in a big hat, dish out the cardboard rolls to graduates. I delivered the necessary platitudes – mainly by flattering the parents. I told them that they had saved all that money to get their offspring a good career and the ungrateful bastards would stick them in a care home as quickly as possible...
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