Our Honours system works best not when rewarding political cronies for their financial support or overpaid footballers, pop stars and TV “celebrities” for their “cultural” contribution but when saying thank you to those who have made a genuine impact on their local community.

There are millions of people in this country who tirelessly work away, often thanklessly, in their field who do not receive the recognition they deserve because their job does not have a public profile. Who is to say that someone who works for a company for 40 years doing everything asked of them successfully and well – a silent cog in a well-oiled machine – has made less of a contribution than a reality TV “star” who becomes famous for being “famous?”

Is someone who has spent 40 years doing an efficient acting job in a TV soap any more valuable than a person who has spent the same period cleaning in a school or training Brownies or Cub Scouts three nights a week in their own time? And, surely, an actor who wins an Oscar has had his reward in that accolade – should he be given an honour simply for having won another honour?

Not everyone can receive an honour and not everyone deserves one but there are many in today’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list who do. If you want to know who they are, skim-read the list of the rich and famous for the odd exception and, instead, concentrate on the list of those in our communities whose names you probably won’t recognise. They, of course, are the real heroes.