This year's New Year Honours list - the first signed off by King Charles III - has seen a number of famous faces earn honours for their work.
Queen guitarist Brian May has been appointed a knight bachelor for services to music and charity.
The musician and animal welfare campaigner famously played God Save The Queen on the roof of Buckingham Palace during the Golden Jubilee before performing again at the Platinum Jubilee two decades later.
Sir Brian told the PA news agency: “I regard it as a kind of charge, like a kind of commission to do the things that one would expect a knight to do – to fight for justice, to fight for people who don’t have any voice.”
Meanwhile, Countdown star Rachel Riley has been made an MBE for her efforts to raise awareness of the Holocaust and combat antisemitism.
The TV presenter and mathematician, whose mother is Jewish, has been honoured for her services to Holocaust education as an avid campaigner.
She took over from Carol Vorderman as co-host of Channel 4’s Countdown in 2009 at the age of 22, after Vorderman stepped down from the role she had held since the show began in 1982.
In January 2019, she made a speech at a Westminster reception for the Holocaust Educational Trust addressing the abuse she received on social media as a public figure.
She has also worked with the Centre for Countering Digital Hate to combat online abuse.
Actor Stephen Graham has become an OBE for services to drama in the New Year Honours list.
The 49-year-old Merseyside-born actor has won plaudits playing Irish, English and American criminals and police officers in various blockbuster Hollywood films and hit TV dramas across his three-decade career.
He starred in the 2000 crime comedy film Snatch alongside Brad Pitt and Jason Statham, as well as 2019’s gangster epic The Irishman, where he played real-life mobster Anthony Provenzano alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
Graham also played criminals Stephen Shang in Gangs Of New York in 2002, Baby Face Nelson in Public Enemies in 2009 and infamous mobster Al Capone in period crime drama series Boardwalk Empire.
He is perhaps best known for his role of short-fused English nationalist Andrew “Combo” Gascoigne in the 2006 film This Is England.
He later reprised the skinhead character in the Channel 4 series This Is England ’86, This Is England ’88 and This Is England ’90.
Graham has credited his fellow This Is England and Boiling Point co-star and wife Hannah Walters for helping him following a suicide attempt during a period of despair in his early 20s.
Frank Skinner said he had not yet told those closest to him he has been made an MBE in the New Year Honours because he thought it may have been “some sort of administrative error”.
The broadcaster and comedian, 65, whose real name is Christopher Graham Collins, has been recognised for his services to entertainment.
Regarded today as a comedy stalwart, he began his live stand-up career in 1987 when he tried his hand as a comic at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
He returned to the festival to scoop one of comedy’s most prestigious prizes – the Perrier Award – four years after his first performance.
Speaking about being made an MBE, he told the PA news agency: “Well, to be honest, I haven’t told anyone at all, even those closest to me, because I still thought there might be some sort of administrative error.
“But I think it’s brilliant.
“I deal mainly in laughs and applause and they disappear into the air quite quickly.
“So getting a proper medal that you can hold on to and polish regularly feels (it) has given my career a sense of permanence that I like.”
Virginia McKenna, the 91-year-old actress and co-founder of the Born Free Foundation, said her damehood “really belongs” to campaigners who are fighting to “end wild animal suffering and keep wildlife in the wild”.
The 91-year-old actress, co-founder of the Born Free Foundation, has become a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to wildlife conservation and to wild animal welfare, in the New Year Honours.
Her charity campaigns for animals to remain free from captivity and promotes the protection of endangered species and natural habitats.
As one of the most popular and acclaimed British film actresses of the 1950s and 1960s, McKenna became a wildlife campaigner alongside her husband Bill Travers and their son Will, after McKenna and Travers featured in the 1966 film Born Free, set in Kenya.
McKenna said of her damehood: “This award may be in my name, but I feel it really belongs to all those striving to end wild animal suffering and keep wildlife in the wild.
“Bill and I shared a belief in the power of one. One animal that needs rescuing; one species that needs protecting; one human community that needs supporting; one ecosystem that needs conserving.
“And the power that resides in each of us every day to do something about it.”
Actor and broadcaster David Harewood has been made an OBE in the New Year Honours list after becoming a prominent voice for better mental health support.
The 57-year-old, who found widespread fame playing CIA director David Estes in the US drama series Homeland, has been honoured for his services to drama and charity.
In 2019, Harewood created a one-off BBC documentary titled Psychosis And Me, which saw him retrace his steps and delve into his breakdown after being sectioned aged 23.
The acclaimed actor later backed the launch of a new online platform, JAAQ.co.uk (Just ask a question), which helps prevent people with mental health problems “reaching crisis stage”, from founder Danny Gray, who previously appeared on Dragons’ Den.
He told presenter Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in May this year: “I started to sort of have these moments of blackouts and suddenly wake up at three o’clock in the morning and I’d be outside Euston station in the middle of the night.
“I’d go, ‘what on Earth am I doing here? I better go home’, and I’d start walking home and then black out, and I’d wake up in Camden at four o’clock in the afternoon.
“I was just in and out of reality. It was bizarre and scary and ethereal.”
While discussing the potential causes of his breakdown, Harewood spoke candidly about experiencing racism as a child and the subsequent intrusive feelings that followed him into adulthood.
This year’s list, which is the first published since the Queen’s death and the first to be signed off by her son the King, includes a total of 1,107 recipients – 50% of whom are women.
