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National treasures

December 15th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Life · 1 Comment · Life

Like many people I have used the term ‘national treasure’ before. What I idn’t realise is that the term can have a formal status and actually does in many countries. The term used by UNESCO is living human treasure and they even have a 12-page set of guidelines for how a country should organise an official list of such people. Australia has just such an official list of Australian living treasures, limited to 100 people. I like the fact that they have Barry Humphries on their list. A few of their treasures have died and there are some vacancies. I wonder if they will induct Tim Minchin when it is time to top up the list.

It got me thinking about what such a list would look like for the UK.I would love to see some sort of official recognition – it would make a fine replacement for the ridiculous honours system that we currently have. The danger is that it would, like the honours system, be dominated by time-serving politicians and civil servants with a selection of obvious safe candidates on top.

I imagine that such a list would include Bruce Forsyth, Cliff Richard, JK Rowlings, David Jacobs, Clive Sinclair, Delia Smith, Alan Titchmarsh, Stephen Hawking, Lenny Henry, Babs Windsor, Joanna Lumley, Jamie Oliver, Felicity Kendal, Brian Blessed, Helen Mirren, Paul McCartney, Tim Henman at least one Attenborough, Stephen Fry, Ronnie Corbett, Brian Cox and Jeremy Paxman. To be fair, if I was given despotic powers quite a few of them would be on my list as well, but I reckon that quite a few of my personal choices would never get anywhere near a hypothetical offical list of living national treasures – and a lot of them would come nowhere near meeting the UNESCO qualifications either.

For what its worth, at a minimum my list would feature: Wilko Johnson, Tony Benn, Trevor Brooking, Jerry Sadowitz, Victoria Coren, Lemmy, Charlie Brooker, Penny Smith, Robert Rankin, Iain Banks, David Gilmour, Andrew Collins, Ariane Sherine, Don Letts, Danny Baker, Robyn Hitchcock, Meera Syal, Tom Baker, Christopher Brookmyre, Polly Toynbee, Tim Berners-Lee, Elton John, Lauren Laverne, Patrick Stewart, Suggs, Ian McMillan, Dizzee Rascal, Joan Bakewell, Mark Thomas, Benjamin Zephaniah, Anne Nightingale, Ian McKellan, Arthur Smith, Damon Albarn, Shami Chakrabarti, Jeff Stelling, Rick Wakeman, Caitlin Moran, Barry Cryer, Scroobius Pip, Will Self, Amir Khan, Eddie Izzard and Tim Marlow. And Spizz of course. Some of them are on the list for very trivial reasons.

I would certainly avoid politicians, except those who go over and above normal politics. Tony Benn is there more for what he has done after leaving parliament than what he did in it. The Aussies seem to have included all their ex-PMs and quite a few state governors as well as at least one current MPs. I think our politics is too tribal to have that.

Even more fun would be to have an official national anti-treasures list. Not so much a list of living legends as a list of living knob-ends. It would be a natural home for the likes of Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell, Paul McMullan, Nick Griffin, Kelvin McKenzie, Jeremy Clarkson, Liz Jones… actually such a list would be so dominated by people connected with Mail and NI-related newspapers it would be too predictable.

Any thoughts?

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One Comment so far ↓

  • jams o donnell

    Now that is an excellent list Skds. We are certainly of one mind when it comes to Robyn! And I agree wholeheartedly with adding Scroobious Pip to the list.

    I would definitely add Terry Pratchett and Fred Sanger (definitely the greatest living englishman)… and Christopher Fowler . Have you read the Bryant and May books? If not I would wholeheartedly recommend them