Rod Liddle today in the Sunday Times
All right, perhaps it's not the most egregious knighthood ever bestowed upon someone by a British sovereign. That, I suspect, would be when Benito Mussolini was made an honorary knight by King George V “for services to making the trains run on time and instilling a sense of discipline into a feckless, libidinous, cowardly and idle race”. I think those were the words.
Or there's Robert Mugabe, knighted by Liz in 1994, presumably for killing more of his fellow countrymen than Ian Smith could have dreamt of. Or Nicolae Ceausescu, knighted in 1980 because he occasionally hacked off the Russians, I would guess.
That's before we get to the traitor Anthony Blunt and, of course, Jimmy Savile. So there have been plenty of real bad'uns. If you want a rogues' gallery, just look at who the British state has honoured. And who it will undoubtedly continue to honour .
We should bear all this in mind before frothing at the mouth over the knighthood about to be bestowed upon David Beckham