Delighted to hear confirmation of the OBE for Brian Clemens in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. I’m no big royalist but these are national honours and, much as I’d like to imagine Her Maj slipping in an Avengers DVD to keep the grandkids entertained, there’s more at work here than just patronage and whim.
Although it’s fascinating to see the cultural forces at work, determining who gets what. Awards are an odd mixture of politics, crowd-pleasing, and genuine appreciation of merit. Punch a clock on a soap for long enough and you’ll qualify as a national treasure. Recognition for those with significant but behind-the-scenes achievements is much more hard-won.
Play heroes and you get a knighthood; create those heroes and they stand you in a different line. In BAFTA’s case they even shunt your awards to a different night, the one that no one watches.
But that’s a whole nother argument.
2 responses to “Brian Clemens, OBE”
I thought of you when Brian Clemens got his OBE. I'm sure John Steed raised a glass of champers as well.
But the Bafta battle is by no means over. It's indicative of how writers in Britain, particularly telly ones, are being treated. It's more important than ever that writers stand up for themselves, individually & through the Guild, and make their voices heard. You can't stop a writer from writing but execs regularly get stopped from exec-ing!
I take the awards very seriously, but the debate has brought home to me the extent to which my cash and my vote go into providing GMTV with coverage of frocks.