Industry | 2009.12.30
Forty years, three chords and two gongs
Confirming that conformity comes with longevity, Status Quo\'s ageing rockers Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi have joined the establishment – accepting OBEs in today\'s New Year honours list.
Still rockin\' all over the world at 61 and 60 respectively, the men behind one of Britain\'s most successful, and hard-living, bands for the past four decades, have been recognised for services to music and to charity.
Yesterday, abandoning any rock\'n\'roll pretensions, they admitted they were absolutely delighted.
"Us, of all people!" said Rossi, lead singer. "I\'m not sure that we deserve it, but fuck it, I\'m so made up it\'s ridiculous. You hear about people refusing them because it\'s not rock\'n\'roll but that\'s a dickhead approach. My partner [Parfitt] is even more excited about it – he\'s probably blubbing. You start off rebellious, a teenager in a band, but you end up being part of the establishment."
After more than 40 years, 22 British top 10 singles, 32 album hits and more than 118m record sales worldwide, the band that bequeathed to the nation a distinctive hernia-inducing, thumbs-in-the-belt-loops rock dance, are still lauded as Britain\'s hardest working band, playing to 250,000 fans at 27 arenas in 2009 alone. They have also raised millions for charity.
Given decades of notoriously wild living, Parfitt doubted that he could be suitable candidate for an honour.
"I\'d kind of given up hoping. Particularly with my wild past – if they\'d reviewed some of my old newspaper cuttings," said the lead guitarist and singer, who has survived an emergency quadruple heart bypass and a cancer scare.
Elsewhere in the honours list, there was a knighthood for Patrick Stewart, 69, the actor famous for his roles in Star Trek and, most recently, on stage with the RSC as Hamlet\'s father, Claudius. Nicholas Hytner, the National Theatre\'s director, is also knighted for services to drama, including his bringing to life new works by Alan Bennett, such as the History Boys, as well as spawning West End hits such as War Horse. He was also the man who staged Jerry Springer: the Opera early in his time at the National.
The Scottish rugby international-turned Lions coach, Ian McGeechan, 63, was also knighted, and the 2009 Formula One champion, 29-year-old Jenson Button, has been awarded an MBE.
Elsewhere in sport, Beth Tweddle, Britain\'s most successful gymnast, receives an MBE, and the former England football captain Jimmy Armfield is given a CBE for his community work in Lancashire.
MBEs go to Claire Taylor, the first woman to be named one of Wisden\'s cricketers of the year, and to the Blackburn Rovers striker Jason Roberts.
The co-founders and chefs of the Michelin-starred River Café restaurant in west London, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, have received MBEs for their services to the hospitality industry.
Claire Bertschinger, whose appearance in Michael Buerk\'s 1984 reports on the Ethiopian famine inspired Bob Geldof to organise Live Aid, is made a dame for services to nursing and to international humanitarian aid.
The TV wildlife presenter and cameraman Simon King gets an OBE.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/31/new-years-honours-status-quo
Instagram is adding automatic in-app text translation - The Verge views: 1530
Here’s a ‘Brand-New’ Massive Multilingual Dataset for Machine Translation views: 1527