Allan_D

Might be significant health wise, might just indicate that once you've been president other honours seem tame, maybe there was something good on tv that night. What the hell has he done to merit this award? Yes, he was President but that was 30 years ago. Since then he has just evaded death. Maybe that's worth an award in itself, perhaps the "Squeaky" Fromm Survival Award! Ford also received a Profile in Courage Award from the Kennedy Foundation, of all places, a few years back for giving Nixon a pardon in 1974 thus stymieing his own chances of election in 1976. If he lives up to 12 November this year he will have broken Ronald Reagan's record as the longest-lived ex-President and he might actually, unlike Reagan, be aware of it! He celebrates his 93rd on Friday, Bastille Day, and is one of several Presidents born in July including Calvin Coolidge (only President born on the 4th) and George Bush Jnr (6th).

No, that was Basil Brush In fact it was Basil Fawlty in "Fawlty Towers" the endlessly-repeated (for UK digital TV viewers) 12-episode series about the manic Torquay hotelkeeper played by John Cleese made in 1975. There is a connection though as D'Oliveira's name does crop up in a conversation between Fawlty and the eccentric Major (a permanent resident throughout the series) as the latter refers to him as having made a century: http://www.sportinglife.com/cricket/news/s...ual_115623.html Oddly, 1975 was his only complete domestic season in which he didn't score a hundred- his top score being 97*. Still it's nice to see he's being bumped up from an OBE (which he got in 1969) to a CBE today. Although that is usually a sign of worse to follow. His son, also a cricketer, had to say thankyou on his behalf. The silverware for which England and South Africa now compete (since 2004-5) when they play Test Matches against one another is called the Basil D'Oliveira Trophy- a rich irony due to the fact that he never got to play first-class cricket in South Africa, the country of his birth, owing to, first, apartheid and, secondly, the cancellation of the MCC Tour to South Africa due to have been held in 1968-9 and in which he would have taken part after he had been reinstated in the England side due to public protest over his original non-selection.