Glittering prizes

Blind Date host Cilla Black has been installed as an honorary fellow of Liverpool John Moores University, six years after declining the honour because students objected.

Departing LJMU vice-chancellor Peter Toyne also received an honorary fellowship and his wife Angela Toyne a senior companionship.

Also made honorary fellows at LJMU were: David Hope, archbishop of York; Sara Parkin, programme director, Forum for the Future; John Bird, founder of The Big Issue; Delia Smith, cookery writer; Stelios Haji-Ioannou, chairman of easyJet; Gerard Schwarz, principal conductor, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; and Hugh Doherty, founder and chief executive of Rapid Hardware.

Aston University has awarded honorary degrees to: Michael Buerk, presenter of The Nine O' Clock News and Len Vale-Onslow, 100, Britain's oldest working man and motorcyclist.

Exeter University has awarded honorary degrees to: percussionist Evelyn Glennie (DMus); Per-Olof Astrand, exercise physiologist (DSc); Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery (DLitt); John Taylor, director general of research councils (DSc); Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople (LLD); Peter Sutherland, chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International (LLD); J. K. Rowling, author (DLitt); Edward Abel, chemist and former deputy vice-chancellor at Exeter (DSc); Margaret Lorenz, former chair of Exeter University council (LLD); and Sir Ghillean Prance, scientific director of the Eden Project in Cornwall (DSc).

The University of Glasgow has awarded honorary degrees to: Thomas Wikramanayake, Sri Lankan nutritionist, and Louise Arbour, the past prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.