Fancy

Continuing our summer series on "dressing up", here are two more honorary degree uniforms.

Ex-BBC Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thomson was awarded hers by the University of York. She was keen to talk about her principal part-time role, as interim CEO of the English National Ballet. “Having taken the BBC to Salford I’m now taking ballet to Liverpool", she tells house mag Grapevine.

Whoa, right there. Both the Royal Court and The Empire in Liverpool have played host to ballet for years - the Festival Ballet (which morphed into the ENB) toured regularly from the 50s. Fonteyn and Nureyev played a week in 1966. I'm sure Liverpool will accord Caroline the appropriate warm artistic welcome for her pioneering work.

Meanwhile, I've finally caught up with Lord Hall's honorary degree at the University of Birmingham. Here's the whole thing - Tony's response starts at 9.10, including the journey from Little Green Lane County Primary, Small Heath.