I love Grayson Perry. I think he is a real national treasure as an award-winning artist, writer and broadcaster.

I particularly liked what he did during the pandemic when he presented Grayson’s Art Club from his home studio, encouraging viewers to produce and share their own lockdown artworks, culminating in an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery.

I find him thought-provoking, witty, challenging and engaging.

But why has he been made a knight in the New Year’s Honours List?

The same can be said of MP Chris Bryant, one of the few politicians I really like and admire. But why is he now Sir Chris Bryant?

Why has The King made Queen star Brian May a ‘Sir’ in his first New Year Honours list as monarch? Guitarist, astrophysicist, and badgers’ rights campaigner May is honoured alongside a Damehood for Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis. Why?

And if we are giving out honours, how come only some of the Lionesses have been honoured after their brilliant year? England Women’s captain Leah Williamson received an OBE, while Lucy Bronze, Beth Mead and Ellen White are all awarded MBEs.

But what about the rest of the team? Don’t they deserve some kind of gong as well? Doesn’t seem fair to me. If you are dishing out honours to some, why not to all?

And why hasn’t David Beckham been knighted? After all, he put in the legwork (literally) by queuing up for hours with ordinary members of the public to see the Queen’s coffin when she was lying in state at Westminster Hall – no Holly and Phil shortcut for our David.

Of course, this just goes to underline the sheer outdated and old-fashioned nonsense of the whole honours system.

So what we have are famous (and quite often rich) people getting a gong for basically doing their job.

And if I thought the honours system was devalued before, it has been tarnished and corrupted beyond redemption by some of the recent political appointments, particularly by the naked manipulation of the system by Boris Johnson, loading the House of Lords with his placemen.

With one honourable exception, you could scrap the entire honours shenanigans for all I care and consign it to the bin marked ‘quaint relics of a feudal time that are no longer relevant in a modern society’.

As I said, I will make an exception for those given a British Empire Medal, the only award in my humble opinion that has any merit.

It tends to be given to ‘ordinary’ people so in the 2023 New Year’s Honours we have people including Patricia Johnson from Winsford, who is a locality officer for Cheshire West and Chester Council for services to local government and the community in Winsford; Dee Drake who co-founded the Knutsford-based charity the Toy Appeal with her husband Chris; Peter Offord Davies, aged 100, from Bollington for his services to education (he is a reading volunteer at Dean Valley Community Primary School in Bollington); and Simon Read from Knutsford has been awarded a BEM for his services to the community in Pickmere.

These are the sort of people we should be honouring, not TV stars, politicians and retired sportspeople.

So my heartfelt congratulations to all our British Empire Medal recipients.

On another topic, I was intrigued to read the story of a drug gang who were stopped by police on the M6 and a search of the car uncovered ecstasy tablets with a street value estimated at between £250,000 and £500,000.

Now I’m no criminal mastermind but to be honest, if I was shipping a massive stash of Class A drugs around the country, I think there are a few things I wouldn’t do.

With all due respect to the criminals, using a pink Ford Mustang for transportation is hardly inconspicuous.

And maybe driving at 30mph on the M6 wasn’t the smartest of ideas. And if you add in erratic driving, changing lanes without indicating and narrowly avoiding a number of collisions, they may as well have had a big neon sign on top of the car saying: Arrest me.