When an Honorary Doctorate is not to be argued with

I have written many times over the years on Wonkhe about Honorary Degrees and all of the deserving or indeed less worthy recipients of them.

In the distant past the award of an Honorary Degree used to be just a nice way to recognise academic stars who would otherwise go unacknowledged beyond their disciplines, connect with the occasional minor royal or celebrate unsung heroes, not quite lollipop men and women but their higher ed equivalents.

Not that many years ago this all shifted to a much stronger focus on celebrity – getting more famous people who would add a bit of sparkle and glamour to graduation and some of whose star quality might rub off on the university.

When I started noting these celeb honoraries over 12 years ago there was an interesting mix including some celebrity faves such as Floella Benjamin, Maggie Philbin, Armando Ianucci and Ted Danson. Not forgetting Ken Dodd of course.

But as more recent events have shown, the value of celebrity associations can sometimes go down as well as up – see for example the previously awarded and since revoked honoraries for Bill Cosby, Jimmy Savile, Harvey Weinstein, Rudolph Guiliani, Oscar Pistorius and others. 

Of course this is not a wholly new phenomenon – who can forget Edinburgh’s challenges with Robert Mugabe and Keele’s travails with Kurt Waldeim – both revealing themselves to be rather different to the original impression they created when donning their gowns and listening to the flattering orations.

The New Reality

Picking worthy Honorary Degree recipients has become challenging in new and exciting ways therefore and universities have to be a bit more thorough with their due diligence or run the risk of past indiscretions entering the public domain in ways which do the very opposite of adding to institutional brand and reputation. And of course the more youthful the recipient the more years of potential they have ahead of them to bring embarrassment to the awarding institution

One of the important things about these awards, whether they be an Honorary DLitt, DMus, DEng,  DSc or whatever, is that they are Honorary. No-one is pretending that a recipient has done any work at all to justify the title. It is an unearned bauble. Unlike all of the other doctorates which will in all likelihood be awarded in the same ceremony our celebrity chef, dancer, author or TikTok star will have not laboured for three or more years in the lab or stacks crafting a thesis of insane specificity (which few will read) to push back the frontiers of knowledge. They just turn up, dress up in a gown and funny bonnet, listen to some nice words about them, have a pleasant lunch or dinner and then depart, probably never to visit the campus again.

Part of the deal though is that, despite the award, the title is almost never used by the recipient. Unless it is in the unlikely scenario that the celeb in question does happen to return to the university for some reason or, more likely, the fundraising team is writing to them to invite a contribution to the redevelopment of the chemistry labs. In these very specific cases, Mr Sparkletoes will actually be addressed as Doctor. It is only by and within the university though. The magic of the Honorary award ceases to work beyond the edges of the campus. Indeed, the only other public reference to it is likely to be somewhere near the end of the celeb’s Wikipedia page. It is, after all, and I cannot stress this enough, an honorary award. Its real value is next to nought.

The Luckiest Guy Alive?

Having said all of that there remains one individual who defies all of these rules. This remarkable person has proved himself to be the exception which proves so many rules. Indeed throughout his 50 or so years as a poet and entertainer he has managed to acquire genuine national treasure status. John Cooper Clarke, for it is he, was awarded an honorary degree by Salford University back in 2013:

Performance poet John Cooper Clarke has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Salford.

Cooper Clarke, 64, who used to work as a lab technician at Salford Technical College, is credited with influencing artists ranging from the Arctic Monkeys to Bill Bailey.

The performer, nicknamed the Bard of Salford, emerged in the punk rock era of the 70s.

He said after Thursday’s ceremony: “What a thrill, who’d have thought it?”

Cooper Clarke was presented with the doctorate of arts in “acknowledgement of a career which has spanned five decades, bringing poetry to non-traditional audiences and influencing musicians and comedians”.

He said: “Now I’m a doctor, finally my dream of opening a cosmetic surgery business can become a reality.”

Cooper Clarke’s satirical verse delivered in a machine-gun Mancunian accent saw him support such punk acts as The Clash, The Sex Pistols and Siouxsie and The Banshees, before going on to top the bill himself.

Since then he appears to have resolutely and unselfconsciously used the title Dr at every opportunity. 

I am very much looking forward to seeing Dr Cooper Clarke when he appears at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham in March 2025 (along with Henry Normal, who has Honorary Doctorates from both the University of Nottingham and NTU) And frankly, given his career and his longevity, I think that unlike most of the other honorary awards I’ve noted over the years, he has genuinely earned the title.