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| Should Andy Murray receive a knighthood? | Should Andy Murray receive a knighthood? |
| (2 months later) | |
| Tom Lamont, Observer writer | Tom Lamont, Observer writer |
| A Brit won Wimbledon – the first for 36 years, since Virginia Wade, the first male for 77 years, since Fred Perry. We both know this because every summer there's interminable hand-wringing about it. There are many ways I see Andy Murray as deserving of a knighthood right now. Among them, the fact he's relieved millions around the UK from croaking that annual, agonised: "When?" | A Brit won Wimbledon – the first for 36 years, since Virginia Wade, the first male for 77 years, since Fred Perry. We both know this because every summer there's interminable hand-wringing about it. There are many ways I see Andy Murray as deserving of a knighthood right now. Among them, the fact he's relieved millions around the UK from croaking that annual, agonised: "When?" |
| John Niven, novelist and screenwriter | John Niven, novelist and screenwriter |
| Yeah. I'd prefer to say he's the first Scotsman to ever win anything ever. You'll have to travel a very, very long way to find a bigger Andy Murray fan than me. I've been screaming myself hoarse at his matches for nigh on 10 years now. Long before he won anything. Long before he cried a few tears and convinced middle England of the stunning fact that "WOW! HE REALLY WANTS TO WIN, HUH?" Like, no shit. But, if we come back to that Scotsman thing, it touches on why I find the idea of a knighthood problematic.... | Yeah. I'd prefer to say he's the first Scotsman to ever win anything ever. You'll have to travel a very, very long way to find a bigger Andy Murray fan than me. I've been screaming myself hoarse at his matches for nigh on 10 years now. Long before he won anything. Long before he cried a few tears and convinced middle England of the stunning fact that "WOW! HE REALLY WANTS TO WIN, HUH?" Like, no shit. But, if we come back to that Scotsman thing, it touches on why I find the idea of a knighthood problematic.... |
| TL: Go on. | TL: Go on. |
| JN: Well, not to get too Braveheart about this, but, back in the day, English knights did some pretty dark stuff to Scotland. And the kind of Scottish knights that were created back then tended to be what we would later call "collaborators". So it doesn't sit too well with me, the whole thing. Just the very idea of a knighthood for an outsider like Murray. Quite apart from the horrendous embracing-of-the-empire aspects (I'm sure the real reason why that other Scottish outsider Danny Boyle recently turned one down), at the very least it's just so... uncool. Especially in one so young. Sir Andy. It'd be a whole lot cooler just to turn it down. You've already got Elton, McCartney, Jagger and the like all fruiting about being called Sir. Do you really want to be in that club? | JN: Well, not to get too Braveheart about this, but, back in the day, English knights did some pretty dark stuff to Scotland. And the kind of Scottish knights that were created back then tended to be what we would later call "collaborators". So it doesn't sit too well with me, the whole thing. Just the very idea of a knighthood for an outsider like Murray. Quite apart from the horrendous embracing-of-the-empire aspects (I'm sure the real reason why that other Scottish outsider Danny Boyle recently turned one down), at the very least it's just so... uncool. Especially in one so young. Sir Andy. It'd be a whole lot cooler just to turn it down. You've already got Elton, McCartney, Jagger and the like all fruiting about being called Sir. Do you really want to be in that club? |
| TL: "One so young," you say of the 26-year-old. Those who have taken against the idea of a knighthood for Muzz (the majority, from what I've seen and read) have tended to hold his youth against him. He's won two grand slams, the US Open and that much-craved Wimbo. He's contested two further grand slam finals. He's won an Olympic gold medal. All in just over a year. And the response from the knighthood naysayers has been (to paraphrase): "Wait until you've lived a little, son." Anyway, there are precedents. The sailor Ellen MacArthur was 28 when she got a damehood in 2005. Bradley Wiggins, knighted last year for his epic cycling achievements, was 32. Wiggins has often said he was inspired to get serious about his sport while watching the 1992 Olympics on TV – so that's 20 years of back-breaking work before his enormous 2012. Murray was hot-housed in tennis from the age of three – 23 years of back-breaking work. Age is a distraction. It's the depth of the achievement, the work put in towards that achievement, the impact of that achievement, that should count. Not age. | TL: "One so young," you say of the 26-year-old. Those who have taken against the idea of a knighthood for Muzz (the majority, from what I've seen and read) have tended to hold his youth against him. He's won two grand slams, the US Open and that much-craved Wimbo. He's contested two further grand slam finals. He's won an Olympic gold medal. All in just over a year. And the response from the knighthood naysayers has been (to paraphrase): "Wait until you've lived a little, son." Anyway, there are precedents. The sailor Ellen MacArthur was 28 when she got a damehood in 2005. Bradley Wiggins, knighted last year for his epic cycling achievements, was 32. Wiggins has often said he was inspired to get serious about his sport while watching the 1992 Olympics on TV – so that's 20 years of back-breaking work before his enormous 2012. Murray was hot-housed in tennis from the age of three – 23 years of back-breaking work. Age is a distraction. It's the depth of the achievement, the work put in towards that achievement, the impact of that achievement, that should count. Not age. |
| JN: It's not just about his age. I don't care if he's 26 or 66. If he's offered it, I don't think he should accept it. I mean, I can see that there might be extraneous reasons why Murray might feel he should: for his family, or for his country or his sport or whatever. We often hear of the grand old actor who "really isn't bothered" about it but accepts because the wife really wants to be Lady Whoever. But, Christ, even just talking about it is depressing. "Sir this" and "Lady that"... it just feels Byzantine. Ridiculous. I think Harold Pinter said it best: "I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid, a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights." | JN: It's not just about his age. I don't care if he's 26 or 66. If he's offered it, I don't think he should accept it. I mean, I can see that there might be extraneous reasons why Murray might feel he should: for his family, or for his country or his sport or whatever. We often hear of the grand old actor who "really isn't bothered" about it but accepts because the wife really wants to be Lady Whoever. But, Christ, even just talking about it is depressing. "Sir this" and "Lady that"... it just feels Byzantine. Ridiculous. I think Harold Pinter said it best: "I couldn't possibly accept. I found it to be somehow squalid, a knighthood. There's a relationship to government about knights." |
| TL: The honours system does start to look ridiculous when it's applied to sport. Kelly Holmes's double Olympic gold in 2004 was worth a damehood; Mo Farah's similarly brilliant tin-grab in 2012 was worth a CBE. It often seems arbitrary and belligerently so, like the scoring in a comedy panel show. By the numbers, there also seems to be a massive preference for knighting sailors and cricketers. Just one tennis knighthood (an Aussie, Norman Brookes, in 1939). There have been as many for squash. For fencing! | TL: The honours system does start to look ridiculous when it's applied to sport. Kelly Holmes's double Olympic gold in 2004 was worth a damehood; Mo Farah's similarly brilliant tin-grab in 2012 was worth a CBE. It often seems arbitrary and belligerently so, like the scoring in a comedy panel show. By the numbers, there also seems to be a massive preference for knighting sailors and cricketers. Just one tennis knighthood (an Aussie, Norman Brookes, in 1939). There have been as many for squash. For fencing! |
| Murray has made things easy for selectors – there's no tougher thing in sport, right now, than to excel at men's tennis. Nothing less than the top nod will do for Andy. And were it to be offered, I hope he'd say yes. An objection, however principled or well explained, would swallow his incredible year whole. Murray would be talked about as much for flipping off the Queen as he would for winning at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows. | Murray has made things easy for selectors – there's no tougher thing in sport, right now, than to excel at men's tennis. Nothing less than the top nod will do for Andy. And were it to be offered, I hope he'd say yes. An objection, however principled or well explained, would swallow his incredible year whole. Murray would be talked about as much for flipping off the Queen as he would for winning at Wimbledon and Flushing Meadows. |
| JN: Well, I don't think there's any way that being talked about for flipping off the Queen could be considered a bad thing. However, as Alan Bennett pointed out, the whole coolness of turning down a knighthood only really applies if you do it quietly and privately. Like Bennett did. Unfortunately, Murray isn't going to get the chance to do that because the whole debate about it is already so huge and public. Then it looks like you wanted to turn it down publicly in order to say a huge fuck you to the whole thing. Which, again, I have no problem with. | JN: Well, I don't think there's any way that being talked about for flipping off the Queen could be considered a bad thing. However, as Alan Bennett pointed out, the whole coolness of turning down a knighthood only really applies if you do it quietly and privately. Like Bennett did. Unfortunately, Murray isn't going to get the chance to do that because the whole debate about it is already so huge and public. Then it looks like you wanted to turn it down publicly in order to say a huge fuck you to the whole thing. Which, again, I have no problem with. |
| TL: You're bogged down by what's cool. I don't know if a knighthood's cool; my gut feeling is that one so giddily recommended by David Cameron is not. Whatever. Andy Murray is our very best active sportsman (currently on the highest level with Sir Wiggo, maybe even a notch above, the WTA's monster schedule being what it is) and it chimes right with me that he should bag every applicable accolade going. Sports personality of the year is a lock. He's shortly to become one of the best-paid sportsmen in the world. All of this is good and right. Give him a sir. | TL: You're bogged down by what's cool. I don't know if a knighthood's cool; my gut feeling is that one so giddily recommended by David Cameron is not. Whatever. Andy Murray is our very best active sportsman (currently on the highest level with Sir Wiggo, maybe even a notch above, the WTA's monster schedule being what it is) and it chimes right with me that he should bag every applicable accolade going. Sports personality of the year is a lock. He's shortly to become one of the best-paid sportsmen in the world. All of this is good and right. Give him a sir. |
| JN: Correct – any chalice offered from the mouth that sits in the middle of Cameron's plum face is, at best, poisoned. And I don't know if I'm "bogged down by cool" so much as I'm interested in sports and music people I like not becoming hollow mouthpieces of the establishment. If he's offered it (and even Murray thinks it's a bit much), I hope he tells them – very nicely – to insert it into the very coal hole of their empire. | JN: Correct – any chalice offered from the mouth that sits in the middle of Cameron's plum face is, at best, poisoned. And I don't know if I'm "bogged down by cool" so much as I'm interested in sports and music people I like not becoming hollow mouthpieces of the establishment. If he's offered it (and even Murray thinks it's a bit much), I hope he tells them – very nicely – to insert it into the very coal hole of their empire. |
| TL: You're right to point out that Murray doesn't sound sure he wants a knighthood, or whether winning Wimbledon "merits" it (his word). For me it's only further reason to give it to him. Murray isn't a panderer. I can't see him setting up spurious charities down the line in order to firm up the public's good opinion of him: he really doesn't seem to give a damn what we think. Feed the guy a line about the crowd being great – as tennis reporters do – and Murray might just bat it down. After the Wimbledon final, Sue Barker suggested to him the last game was hard for everyone present to watch. "Try playing it," said Murray. He grafts, he's deadpan, he's not a milker. These are enviable characteristics. Reward that. Arise, Sir Andy. | TL: You're right to point out that Murray doesn't sound sure he wants a knighthood, or whether winning Wimbledon "merits" it (his word). For me it's only further reason to give it to him. Murray isn't a panderer. I can't see him setting up spurious charities down the line in order to firm up the public's good opinion of him: he really doesn't seem to give a damn what we think. Feed the guy a line about the crowd being great – as tennis reporters do – and Murray might just bat it down. After the Wimbledon final, Sue Barker suggested to him the last game was hard for everyone present to watch. "Try playing it," said Murray. He grafts, he's deadpan, he's not a milker. These are enviable characteristics. Reward that. Arise, Sir Andy. |
| JN: Maybe they should make him Grand Protector of the Republic of Scotland after we get independence. I think we could all get behind that. | JN: Maybe they should make him Grand Protector of the Republic of Scotland after we get independence. I think we could all get behind that. |
| John Niven's new novel, Straight White Male, is published on 15 August (William Heinemann) | John Niven's new novel, Straight White Male, is published on 15 August (William Heinemann) |
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