Is it really a great honour to be on the New Year Honours list? The 2026 selection has certainly raised eyebrows: alongside genuinely deserving cultural figures like actress and writer Meera Syal, we find Torvill and Dean and one of the Chuckle Brothers. Joining this increasingly motley crew may well be seen as frivolous at best, deeply embarrassing at worst.
No wonder so many titans of the arts world have turned down honours over the years: everyone from punk musicians and socialist writers to mortified comedians and even TV chefs. In a strange way, this club of rebels has become the truly discerning cultural elite – or at least the nobler and more distinguished list on which to add your name.
Our selection here is by no means exhaustive, but these are some of the most significant, and memorable, figures who have chosen to remain dishonourable.
Michael Sheen
The Welsh actor initially accepted his OBE in 2009. However he infamously handed it back in 2017, later explaining to Guardian columnist Owen Jones that it was while doing research for a lecture that he came to more fully understand the “tortured history” between England and his native Wales. Sheen said he would feel like a “hypocrite” if he kept the honour while publicly airing his views, so decided to relinquish it in order to be able to critique traditions such as the Prince of Wales title being given to an Englishman.
John Cleese
leese supplied a typically idiosyncratic response to the honours system. He refused a CBE in 1996 “because I think they are silly”, and also turned down the opportunity to become a working peer in 1999, which was offered to him by Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown (the actor was a big supporter of the party). As Cleese put it: “I realised this involved being in England in the winter and I thought that was too much of a price to pay.”
David Bowie
Bowie turned down not one but two honours: a CBE in 2000 and a knighthood in 2003. He seemed almost baffled to have been asked at all, telling The Sun: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.” He was fairly diplomatic about his fellow rocker Mick Jagger accepting his knighthood though, saying only: “It’s not my place to make a judgment on Jagger – it’s his decision. But it’s just not for me.”
John Lennon
The Beatles initially accepted MBEs in 1965, however John Lennon handed his back four years later, accompanied by a cheeky letter to Queen Elizabeth II. Lennon wrote: “I am returning my MBE as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With love, John Lennon of Bag.” Fellow Beatle George Harrison also refused an OBE in 2000, although in his case, it might have been because he felt insulted that it was a lesser honour: Paul McCartney had been knighted in 1997.
Benjamin Zephaniah
The prolific poet, whose family came from Barbados and Jamaica, seemed to take his offer of an OBE in 2003 as an insult. Writing in the Guardian, Zephaniah recalled his astonishment: “Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought.” The poet went on to describe himself as “profoundly anti-empire”, explaining that the word “reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised”. He summed up his feelings thus: “Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen.”