I haven't met a single person (or a married one come to think of it ) who is at all impressed that this somewhat obscure (apart from his fortuitous bout of notoriety) and minority-taste author should have been honoured with a knighthood. I'd love to have been a fly-on-the-wall in whatever committee meeting decided to give it him:

"Right, chaps, next up is this Rushdie bloke."

"Who?"

Y'know, the one we had to hide for ten years from that Ayatollah feller?"

"Oh, him. Thought he was dead. Anyone ever read his books?"

"Nah. Bloody unreadable I've heard. Anyway, I didn't know he'd written more than one."

"Yeah. Got a list of things here that he's won.   Booker this, literary award that, Whitbread the other. Usual trendy bullshit stuff that no-one really takes much notice of, let alone ever agrees with. Think Oscars and Baftas and all that other self-aggrandising stuff. A lot of 'em seem to be foreign awards. Switzerland, Austria, Italy. Must be bloody masochists - it's hard enough to read his stuff in English!   Even one from the US. Probably got that for getting up Iran's nose - heheh!"

"Yeah, that's a thing though, innit. Things are a bit delicate again there at the minute. What if we give him this and it causes a bit of bother?"

"We should give it him or not give it him on pure literary merit, nowt else! If it gets up I'm-in-a-dinner-jacket's nose, TOUGH!"

"Mind you..."