Some individuals of real integrity here;
Hundreds of people are recognised every year in the New Year’s honours list, but not everyone is so eager to welcome the gesture from the Queen.
Danny Boyle, Jon Snow and Stephen Hawking are among the celebrities to have shunned the offer or an MBE, OBE or CBE. But they’re far from alone.
Here is a list of 29 famous faces who rejected a gong:
The film director didn’t mince his words when he spoke about turning down an OBE in 1977.
Ken Loach, whose films centre on social issues such as poverty, homelessness and benefits, told the Radio Times in 2001: “It’s all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.
“I turned down the OBE because it’s not a club you want to join when you look at the villains who’ve got it.”
The director and master behind the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony revealed he turned down an honour because: “It’s just not me”.
Danny Boyle said it did not feel right to accept the award when thousands of people were involved in the planning and execution of the highly-praised opening ceremony.
He told the Radio Times: “I also thought it was wrong, actually.
“You can make these speeches about ‘this is everybody’s work, blah blah blah’.
“And you’ve got to mean it, and I did mean it, and it is true, and it’s the only way you can carry on something like that: through the efforts of all the people.
“I don’t know whether I’ll ever get invited back to the Palace.”
Jim Broadbent said in 2012: “I was offered an OBE a couple of years ago, but I said, ‘no’, and turned it down.”
The actor said that the honour should be given to those who help others.
He said: “I’m not that comfortable with actors receiving honours, partly because I think they ought to go to those who really help others.
“Besides, I like the idea of actors not being part of the Establishment.
“We’re vagabonds and rogues, and we’re not a part of the authorities and Establishment, really. If you mix the two together, things get blurry.”
The renowned journalist has declined an offer of an OBE, reportedly because he believed that working journalists should not take honours from those about whom they report.
He said: “I tried to find out why I’d been given it and was unable to get a clear answer or, indeed, to find out who had proposed me.”
Liverpool FC’s first black player turned down an MBE last year saying that his “ancestors would be turning in their graves after how Empire and Colonialism had enslaved them”.
Howard Gayle was nominated for the honour for his campaign work with Show Racism the Red Card.
He wrote on his Facebook page: “This is a decision that I have had to make and there will be others who may feel different and would enjoy the attraction of being a Member of the British Empire and those 3 letters after their name, but I feel that It would be a betrayal to all of the Africans who have lost their lives, or who have suffered as a result of Empire.”
Hillsborough campaigner and academic Professor Phil Scraton rejected the offer of an OBE in the Queen’s 2016 New Year’s Honours list, citing how successive governments reneged “on any kind support for the families in getting to the truth”.
Scraton has been widely praised for snubbing the honour, which he said would not be “fitting” for him to accept.
The academic said at the time: “I feel very strongly that for many years the successive governments refused to take seriously the issues that we raised in those early reports and in Hillsborough: The Truth.”
He added: “I think that many of the people who are involved in offering such honours have been part of that process and I feel very strongly that I could not accept an honour now that these issues have been resolved in the way in which they have.”
The poet made a public refusal to collect an OBE in 2003.
Writing in the Guardian at the time, Benjamin Zephaniah explained why he refused to be appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire.
He wrote: “Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought.
“I get angry when I hear that word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised.”
Probably got stuck in a privatised lift.