Good knight, and good luck

For the 24th year running it appears I've been overlooked in the New Year Honours list, published yesterday. But having learnt not to take the repeated snubs too personally, I'm not that bitter about it. Others are far more deserving of the accolades. There's Michael Parkinson, 72, chat show host: presumably knighted because the Queen and Gordon Brown both like to watch him have a chat with Billy Connolly on a monthly, recurring basis. There's Kylie Minogue, 39, but with a bottom not a day over 28, awarded an OBE for being so ruddy bloody brave. And er... some posh rugby sods... and for some bizarre reason, a load of people from 'the world of retail' (where is this world? Can we go there or is it some kind of abstract, metaphysical nonentity that exists only beyond the boundaries of my perception? Or are they just on about Woolworths, Clinkards and Thomas The Baker and all that? If so, I've been to those places and understand it all now).

In preparation for when I'm eventually invited to receive a knighthood, I've already planned how I'll go about refusing it on a republican point of principle. This will see me rank alongside other great refuseniks like JG Ballard, LS Lowry and David Bowie. But rather than a simple and traditional refusal via a written medium, I've decided I'll actually turn up and cause an almighty scene at Buckingham Palace by rejecting it in the Queen's face. Having feigned delight and pride in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, nobody will be any the wiser as I proceed to the front of the room, kneel at the feet of Her Majesty and quietly bow my head. And yet, just as she wields her big massive sword and gets ready to caress my shoulders with it, I'll scramble to my feet, turn on a sixpence and sprint out of the room at full pelt.

This will be monumental. If I get carried away with myself I may even just carry on running all the way out of the palace, down The Mall, through Admiralty Arch and into Trafalgar Square where I'll perform a lap of Nelson's Column before turning down Northumberland Avenue towards Embankment, and somersaulting into the Thames. I believe this headline-grabbing act can serve as a catalyst for the glorious, democratic, socialist revolution I've been plotting in my head. It will be a grab at the collar of the docile masses. A cattle prod to the buttocks of the puppet people. Society will gradually reassess its true purpose and stop routinely destroying itself, and my utopia will finally see its fruition.

Anyone who accepts a knighthood, and any other honour for that matter, has to be an egomaniac. What next? Their own blogs?