Lovers of full-combat Prince Harry rows will be positively looping the loop over the latest one, which has drawn former British military chiefs out of the woodwork to fume about the prospect of the Duke of Sussex being named a “living legend of aviation” this Friday in Beverly Hills. Prince Harry flew as an army helicopter co-pilot and gunner while serving in Afghanistan, but some people just will not countenance the idea that he’s a millennial Douglas Bader. “He is not a living legend of aviation,” thundered erstwhile first sea lord and chief of the naval staff Admiral Lord West. “To suggest he is, is pathetic. It makes the whole thing seem a bit of a nonsense if they’re willing to pick someone like Prince Harry.”
Sorry, Lord West, but I don’t see it. A “living legends of aviation” ceremony, presented by John Travolta, who has not just a Gulfstream but a private Boeing 707 quite literally parked in his Floridian driveway? Induction into a hall of fame where fellow “living legends of aviation” include Morgan Freeman (only got his pilot licence at 65) and Harrison Ford (once crash-landed his plane on a Californian golf course)? Fellow 2024 honorees including Jeff Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez? Again, I’m really going to need his lordship to elaborate on his policy position on this one. How can “the whole thing” seem “a bit of a nonsense”? And that’s even before you consider the fact that the awards host, Travolta, famously once danced at the White House with the award recipient’s mother, and retrospectively called this “probably the best moment of the 80s”. (A look at John’s film credits for the decade will certainly confirm this.)
These are dark times – darker even than the Travolta 80s – and the seriousness of the Prince Harry gala award night situation should be underscored by the fact that Lord West has ventured only twice into commenting this past week: once on the need for strikes on Houthi targets after an escalation of attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea, and once on the forthcoming outrage at the Beverly Hilton (cocktails 6pm, dinner 7pm, awards 8pm). Meanwhile an online petition – perhaps the most ineffectual form of interjection in modern public life, even including words spoken into the void on TalkTV – states the decision to honour the Duke of Sussex is a travesty on the part of “such an esteemed organisation”.
And yet, is it esteemed? Who has really ever heard of this auto-parodic body until now, which was presumably part of the reason they pulled Prince Harry’s name out of the free publicity hat in the first place? It’s amazing, really, how much of the wider esteem business is taken up with confected ceremonies such as the one due to take place in Beverly Hills, and consequently how suspect the entire industry of conferring esteem is.
Almost all awards honouring famous people for non-professional reasons are like this – and a whole host of the ones honouring them for professional reasons are like this, too. Meanwhile, absolutely all awards ceremonies are revenue-gathering schemes (a VIP table at the Legends of Aviation awards will set you back up to $30,000). Therefore all awards that by their very existence emphasise the essentially silly nature of such things are surely to be welcomed – even by former first sea lords/current edgelords furious at having to rent out yet another quote.
Take the humanitarian award industry. The sheer cost of the many humanitarian award ceremonies staged every year could lift countless people out of poverty, and the notion that they are – vague handwave – an effective marketing spend is another claim that never gets seriously interrogated. They are so ubiquitous as to amount to little more than participation medals for celebrities. Paris Hilton has two humanitarian awards. Angelina Jolie has absolutely masses of the things. She does a lot for charity, of course – and I suppose the only people on this Earth who do more for charity, really, are the millions of people who work for charities every day. But they are not famous, and consequently never get their gala night.
Tony Blair seemed to receive some confected award or other every 10 minutes in the years after he left office, with one “global legacy” award from Save the Children causing particular dismay among those still observing the arguably suboptimal fallout of his global legacy. But Blair duly showed up to some glitzy ceremony in New York to receive the thing, with my favourite hilarious detail from the news reports about the event being the fact it was “attended by Ben Affleck and Lassie”. I don’t think they came together? But there genuinely is a picture of a rough collie posing for the photographers on the red carpet.
Whether Prince Harry will even show up in person to be made an #absoluteledge of aviation is unclear. It is even less clear, come to that, whether the latest iteration of Lassie will herself make an appearance at this latest stop on the busy awards-and-honours circuit. If she does find time in her schedule, though, her duties must surely include addressing what now promises to be an absolute army of reporters serried outside. In her timeworn style of raising the alarm, she must simply approach their cameras, and bark an extended warning against taking any of these sorts of events remotely seriously.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
