WHEN news emerged that Mick Jagger was to become a Sir, his long-time collaborator and sometimes compos mentis guitar genius Keith Richards was asked when her Madge would be placing a sword on his shoulders.

He put down a drink, took a cigarette from his mouth and rasped; “Man, I’m holding out for the Lordship.” This is why Keef is the coolest man who has ever lived, died and then lived again.

Jagger actively campaigned for his knighthood, which is the very opposite of cool. He is far from alone in such neediness. Indeed, only recently leaked emails appeared to reveal that David Beckham was furious at being ignored for his services to taking a good free-kick and also his charity work, which he doesn’t like to talk about.

Well, apart from the three documentaries made about the amazing deeds he's done out of the good of his ego.

Beckham was “red flagged” by HM Revenue & Customs when his name was put forward for a knighthood in 2013, because he had invested in a scheme that HMRC said amounted to tax avoidance.

In that case there are a few Rangers players from a certain era who would be lucky to get a swimming badge.

The honours system has long been anything but honourable. To borrow from Groucho Marx, why would anyone want to join a club which has Jimmy Saville as a member.

My all-time favourite is the MBE awarded to one Raffaele Claudio Carbosiero, also known as Lino. He became ‘famous’ for cutting then Primer Minister David Cameron’s hair with a left, rather than right-hand, parting in 2010.

So as the calls come in for the remaining Lisbon Lions to be rewarded, understandable thought they are, it makes me think that they lads wouldn’t actually care about getting a day out at the palace given how cheapened it's all become.

In 2005, the entire England cricket team were awarded MBE's, captain Michael Vaughan was made an OBE, and I will now turn to the never anything less than brilliant letters page in VIZ to sum up my feelings on the matter.

“Hats off to the England cricketers for their achievements in the Ashes this summer, which rightly earned Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff BBC Sports personality of the Year. Winning a two-team tournament against a nation with a much smaller population once in every ten attempts, then never shutting up about it makes me proud to be British.”

Paul Collingwood got his MBE for playing in one test. In the final meeting with the Aussies he scored 17 runs in two innings, bowled four overs for 17 runs and no wickets and didn’t take a single catch.

The entire 32-man England squad, even those who sat on the bench, which won the 2003 rugby World Cup were made Members of the British Empire, which doesn’t actually exists any more. Although try telling that to the ultimate little Englander, ‘Sir’ Clive Woodward’, knighted for coaching a team with Martin Johnson and Jonny Wilkinson in it.

England played seven games to win the trophy, three of them coming up against Georgia, Samoa and Uruguay. All giants of the sport.

I once asked Jim Craig whether he and his fellow Lions felt disrespected because so many less than average sportspeople, almost always English, were awarded in this way when his Celtic team seemed to have been overlooked.

“Son, we’ve got the only medals that count,” was his reply. I shut up after that.

Craig is right, of course, but it is galling that Trevor Brooking is a Sir, apparently for being quite a nice bloke, when Bill Shankly, Jock Stein, Billy McNeill, John Greig, Jim McLean, Dennis Law, Willie Miller and Kenny Dalglish, Britain’s greatest ever footballer and tireless campaigner for the Hillsborough families, are not.

That McNeill in particular, he is ‘only' an MBE, has not been given more recognition tells you everything you need to know about how corrupt and elitist this honours system is.

Ken Dodd is a knight. Didn’t he have tax worries as well? Although apart from that, he has been telling the one joke for 165 years and evidently that makes him better than everyone else.

If gongs are to be rewarded to sports people then it should only be for the best, not just at their sport, but for what they have given to their community as a whole.

If I ruled the world the entire Lions team would each have been given a small island in the tropics as a thank you for what they did for football.

Maybe they were a bit too working class. They were and are certainly way too Scottish. And while it is right to have reservations about all this nonsense, it remains a scandal these lads are viewed lower than Garth Crooks OBE.

I assume this was for services to having a huge head and being a terrible pundit.

Or we can all look at it this way. While McNeill, Greig, Dalglish, Law and so many of their peers should be knighted, every last one of them are way too good for that company.