Tom Shebbeare

Saw Tom Shebbeare in the car park of Waitrose in Abingdon this morning. Haven’t seen Tom for ages, not since the days when we were trying organize the Respect initiative that the Prince of Wales and the Chief Rabbi had thought up a few years ago. And it seems such a long time since we used to commute on the same train from Didcot.

Funnily enough I’d just seen Tom’s picture in Expression, the Exeter University alumni magazine. He’s been given an honorary doctorate; he joked that this was just a fundraising manoeuvre by the university of which he, like me, is a graduate. He asked me when I’d graduated.

‘1969,’ I said.

He said he’d graduated in 1973 and then, ‘You’re much better preserved than I am!’

It seems that Tom had served on some committee for the Vice Chancellor of Exeter, whose work amounted to having lunch now and again. When the uni had decided to restructure they wrote asking him to donate if he wanted to stay on he committee. He wrote telling them that he was a generous donor to charity, giving X% of his income, but saying the university was not on the list. This letter crossed with a letter from the university inviting him to accept an honorary doctorate of laws. He reckoned it was because they were short of people to address graduation ceremonies, which he will do in Exeter next week. His one joke (and that was contributed by a friend) was to advise the graduates never to take a job that required the wearing of a hat . That would rule out working at the deli counter in Waitrose or the armed forces. And being Archbishop of Canterbury.

‘Do you have to wear a hat?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We don’t wear hats.’ He thought he would extend his advice against jobs with hats by saying that the Baha’is are sensible people and don’t wear hats.

Tom’s left off being the Director of the Prince’s Trust. He’d done that for 16 years and, at the end, was in charge of 800 people. He’s now the ‘obergruppenf00fc;hrer’ (to use Tom’s word) of The Prince’s Charities - a kind of paid Executive Chairman with a strategic co-ordinating role for the whole group of trusts and charities. He also has a 00a3;3m r&d budget to dream new ideas for HRH to launch!

He asked me if I’d got a knighthood (like Iqbal Sacranie and Jonathan Sacks - and like Tom himself). Not me, I said. I’d heard that Jonathan Sacks had really wanted a peerage, and we considered how those who dole out knighthoods and peerages would have to make very careful calculations when giving these things to religious leaders. They would have to ensure that no one felt that someone else had had a bigger present than they had.

I have to say I have wondered whether I would like to get an honour of some kind. I wouldn’t mind an OBE. I think an MBE would be rather demeaning, but a knighthood would be fun. I wouldn’t mind being Sir John Leith (I don’t think I’d be the first Sir John in the Leith family) or Sir Barnabas Leith. Or perhaps it would be more demotic to be Sir Barney Leith.

I can dream, can’t I?