‘You can’t change everything but you can change your world'

John Bishop and Sanjeev Bhaskar have both been awarded an honorary doctorates.

Bhaskar’s accolade came as a surprise to mark his tenth year as chancellor of the University Of Sussex.

While Manchester Metropolitan University said Bishop’s accolade was to mark his ‘significant contribution to comedy, arts and charitable work’.

Speaking at the graduation ceremony the stand-up, who got a BA from the institution when it was still a polytechnic, told students: ‘Thank you for allowing me to become part of your day, I sat in that seat and watched some of you walk on the stage and you could see the nervousness, the apprehension, the joy and the pride that was in your faces.

‘Thirty years ago this summer I was receiving the same welcome onto a stage. I rented a robe, I rented a hat, and I walked across for 25 seconds and picked up a piece of paper that I had worked three years for.

‘But it wasn’t three years – it was a lifetime up to then. I was the first one in my family to go to university and I went like many of you because I didn’t know what I wanted beyond it, but I knew it was a pathway to somewhere better than where I was starting from.

‘And it did lead to many things, it led to the girl I met in the library that I married, it led me to have three sons who are all Mancs – you can’t get everything right but that was the closest hospital. And it led to a life that I could not have imagined.

‘You can’t change everything but you can change your world and the path that you have chosen through education is the best way of doing it. Go out there, grab the world and be the best version of you.

Goodness Gracious Me star Bhaskar was given his degree after a decade of congratulating new University of Sussex graduates on their degrees - some 40,000 and counting

The announcement was made just after he had finished congratulating some of this year’s leavers.

On receiving the award, Bhaskar said: ‘I wasn't expecting that at all. I thought I might be given a bottle of something for ten years - I didn't think I'd be getting a doctorate.’

Sanjeev's family, including his wife and fellow actor Meera Syal, were in on the secret and were in the audience to witness the moment.

Earlier in the week, he said: ‘One of the wonderful things about Sussex ceremonies are that they're unpredictable and kind of raucous, and energetic and energising and who wouldn't want to be a part of that? 

‘This experience of being Chancellor, and particularly at Sussex, is the gift that keeps giving because it's one of the greatest privileges of my life.’

Published: 27 Jul 2019