THE veteran actress Barbara Windsor has complained that the press have “rained on my parade”. She added: "For a little East End lady to be made a dame just for doing a job that she loves - that's a bit good isn't it?" Well, Dame Barbara, I’m not sure that it is.

I never watch EastEnders, so I can’t comment on how well you play your role there, but I do like your busty, cheeky character in all those Carry On films. Those comedies were entertaining and quintessentially English in the tradition of the bawdy bits in Shakespeare and naughty seaside postcards.

Agreeably vulgar but a world away from pornography. But I don’t think Barbara should have been made a dame. She already has public adulation and she has become rich from the proceeds of the profession she loves.

Maybe we can wink at this honour for Barbara, but I choked on my Weetabix when I read that Jacqueline Gold has been made CBE. Ms Gold is boss of the Ann Summers sex shop chain and among her accomplishments were the invention of the Rampant Rabbit and the Shagasaurus. (Don’t ask!)

But such whimsical appointments are put in the shade by the scandalous award to Lin Homer who has been made a dame – and she didn’t even lose her bra in a film with Kenneth Williams.

Lin Homer was paid £200,000 per annum to preside over the catastrophic mess of our immigration policy, a system which home secretary John Reid denounced as “not fit for purpose” in 2007.

So what do you do with someone who has been a conspicuous failure? You reward her for it by giving her the top job in the British Tax Office, which used to work efficiently before she took over and it is now reduced to a shambles.

But if we gasp at these awards, what words are left to describe Dave’s shameless gift of a knighthood to his chief spin-doctor and general election guru Linton Crosby? Words such as cynical, disgraceful and criminal spring to mind.

The jockey Tony McCoy has been knighted. A charming man who rode 4000 winners – surely a worthy candidate for a gong? But again, he already has the reward of a hugely successful career, he’s got the OBE and in 2010 he was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and a similar accolade was bestowed on him by the Irish broadcaster RTE. Cricket, football and tennis champions, athletes and cyclists have their reward in the medals they won and that should be enough. And while I’m at it, I don’t believe in all those theatrical knights and dames either. It goes without saying that MPs of all parties, colours and hues should never be given honours. There is something preposterous and surreal about the award of the Order of Merit to James Dyson, the inventor of a new sort of vacuum cleaner. So should the entire honours system be scrapped? American society survives and prospers without feeling the need to provide tokens of state recognition, so shouldn’t Britain follow their example?

No. I think outstanding people should receive honours, but they should be rewarded not for what they have done in their own interests, but for the contributions they have made to the good of others. Jonjo Heuerman, aged thirteen, has walked and cycled 800 miles this year to raise £235,000 for his charity, the Bobby Moore Fund. He thoroughly deserves his British Empire Medal. So let’s reward those who do real good, not those who have merely done well for themselves.