Many people in the arts - several of them household names in Britain and Ireland - have received awards in Queen Elizabeth's New Year honours list.
There is a CBE for veteran actor Joss Ackland (71), while leading jazzman Acker Bilk (71), who fought off cancer of the throat to return to playing his clarinet on stage, receives an MBE.
Bill Kenwright, who has been described as the London West End's richest and most powerful impresario, gets a CBE. Flamboyant choreographer Matthew Bourne, whose "male" Swan Lake won 27 international awards, receives an OBE.
Jenny Abramsky, director of BBC Radio and Music, gets a CBE. In a remarkable career, she launched Radio 5 Live, BBC News 24 and BBC News Online, as well as having been editor of the flagship Today programme on BBC radio.
There is an MBE for disc jockey Annie Nightingale, who said: "Any excuse for a party. I'll be quite curious to cop a look at the gardens of Buck House. Plenty big enough for a rave."
There is a CBE for soprano Joan Rodgers, while fellow soprano Patricia Rozario gets an OBE.
Fay Weldon, one of Britain's most prolific novelists, screenwriters and journalists, is made a CBE.
She said: "One feels very flattered and honoured."
There is a CBE for Nicholas Kenyon, former head of Radio 3 who became head of the Proms.
The artist Wilhelmina BarnsGraham gets a CBE for services to art, and there is an MBE for cartoonist Bill Tidy.
An MBE goes, too, to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown for services to journalism. She has written various studies on multiculturalism, including Who Do We Think We Are?, the cover of which shows the Queen, tinted to look as being of Asian descent.
Ursula Fanthorpe, who was once tipped as a poet laureate in Britain, gets a CBE for services to literature. Her 50th birthday tribute in verse to Prince Charles boosted her prospects.
Roger Greenaway, one of the most successful songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s gets an OBE.
An OBE also goes to children's author Alan Garner.