Here they come, see them run, twinkling away like a bunch of irritatingly flashing fairy lights, the milk of human kindness curdling on their breath and dollar signs in their beady little eyes. I’m referring to the National Treasures, wheeled out every Christmas as we huddle around the television. A quick list of those who come immediately to mind – though other NTs are available, if the price is right – are Ant, Attenborough, Balding, Beard (Mary), Carr (Alan), Coles (Richard), Colman (Olivia), Church, Dec, Dench, French, Fry, Izzard, Lineker, Margolyes, Norton, Oliver (Jamie), Osman, Peake, Perry (Grayson), Robinson (Tony), Rosen (Michael), Sayle, Staunton, Thompson (Emma), Toksvig. 

Sometimes it seems harder to name a British public figure who isn’t a National Treasure

Sometimes it seems harder to name a public figure who isn’t an NT. Notables in the Awkward Squad: David Bowie (refused a knighthood and even a funeral as he wanted to ‘go without any fuss’), J.K. Rowling (fearless – NTs are terrified of being unpopular), Jarvis Cocker (more interested in examining the process of fame than reaping its benefits), Alan Sugar (‘National Treasure? You wot? Nah!’) and Ricky Gervais. All have dodged induction due to their refusal to play nice, whereas NTs are needy blighters who were born to toe the line of Whatever’s The Thing This Year. Sometimes celebs desperately want NT status, but they derail themselves by mistake. Think of Cliff Richard fat-shaming dead Elvis or Saint Phillip Schofield’s fall from grace. 

But you really have to blot your copybook to put yourself out of the running. Once used sparingly, the term has run riot in recent years. As with many repressive belief systems these days, the watchwords of NTism are diversity and inclusivity, but the approved views on everything from breakfast to Brexit, penises on women to Palestine, must be held. All sexualities can become NTs, which in practice works out as flamboyant gay men (Carr, Norton), dullard lesbians (Balding, Toksvig) and self-exciting gender non-conformists (Perry, Izzard). No feminists who don’t centre the fantasies of men are allowed, which basically means no feminists. Germaine Greer had a lucky escape, as her perceived ‘dottiness’ had her well on the way to NT status, only for her glinting steel-trap of a mind to reassert itself over gender and save her. 

Here’s the bit the BBC (once a bona fide National Treasure – now a national disgrace) in particular doesn’t want you to know about NTs. They were once entertainers in tune with the people; the first generation of TV NTs had been mostly wartime troupers, working-class boys and girls who had worked extremely hard, with no whiff of nepotism or old school ties. Then came the northern grammar schoolboys; again, hardworking working-class people. What they had in common is that they were of the people; their political leanings were private and differing. Now the only working-class people who become NTs have to take on bourgeois beliefs. 

Many NTs – because no one likes to feel neutered – believe that they are ‘outrageous’ (see Margolyes) and that they ‘dare to say the unsayable’ (but even toddlers swear now, so how?) when in reality they can’t open their cake-holes without mouthing the centrist platitudes which we’ve all heard a million times before; a consequence of progressives becoming the new establishment, and of the nepotism and promotion of class inequality that they endorse and facilitate.

But are they happy? NTs, for all their twinkling, are often – not always, I must stress – unpleasant people whose patina of bonhomie overlays a viciousness often experienced by those poor souls who deal with them in a serving role (see Cilla Black, notorious for being vile to cabin crew). Still, they keep each other’s nasty little secrets well enough – the National Treasure club is like a boat full of people whose abiding mantra is ‘Don’t rock the boat’ – and they’ve worked out that if they keep agreeing with each other, they will keep being invited on to each other’s shows to plug their latest profoundly mediocre efforts.

Perhaps the problem is that a lot of people develop a sense of self-importance when they get a certain level of fame and lose sight of the fact that their opinion still isn’t worth more than anyone else’s (Gandhi Lineker springs to mind here). It’s not that people shouldn’t use their fame to highlight important causes; it’s when their perspective stops being just their perspective and becomes un-assailable wisdom that NTs make utter knobs of themselves. Even the few talented NTs can become insufferable about people who dare not to believe the same middle-class homilies as them. Think of Alan Bennett saying: ‘I went through a rather prissy period immediately after Brexit. I’d ask people if they voted in or out. And if they’d voted out, I wouldn’t give them a selfie. It started to seem rather mean, so I stopped doing it.’ At least he saw the error of his ways and admitted to his prissiness. Few NTs are self-knowing, deafened as they are by applause. 

There are a few NTs I’ve got time for: Maggie Smith, Julie Walters and, of course, Michael Palin. But generally they’re a grim bunch. Though they can be anything from actors to zoologists, they will have one loathsome character trait in common; they were all massively ambitious when young, but they like to pretend that their success was somehow organic and that only other – shallow, grasping – people are driven by attention-seeking and greedy for money. Often they claim to suffer from ‘imposter syndrome’, and thick fans will find them adorbs for being so humble. NTs are really good at pulling the rope up behind them once they’ve made it (unless it’s a blood relative beneath them, of course, as many NTs like to inflict their dreary spawn on an underwhelmed world). On the other hand, most NTs would have sold their mum in order to make it. They generally tend to be hypocrites, and they generally tend to be smug. Apart from all that, they add greatly to the gaiety of nations. But by the time New Year’s Eve rocks up, I have an inkling that the only thing we’ll want to do with National Treasures is bury them.