I LIKE David Beckham. He's clearly a doting and good father (my friend, who's met him and his children says they - the children - are impeccably mannered and polite), he has an engaging personality, and he's been a talented footballer.

He has also done a lot for charity, apparently, and played a not-insignificant role in bringing the Olympic Games to London. Prima facie, then, he deserves a knighthood. After all, if Andy Murray can get one for batting a ball across a net a few times; Elton John for warbling about Saturday night being all right for fighting; and Bradley Wiggins for going on a cycling holiday round France, surely the magic right foot of Becks is a shoo-in for a date with the Queen and a sword at Buckingham Palace?

But while Sir Mo Farah and Dame Jessica Ennis have beaten him to it (well, they were bound to be quicker out of the starting blocks), poor old Becks remains plain old Mr. And, if the leaked email exchanges between him and his publicist are to be believed, he is not at all happy about it. Beckham, when he didn't get a knighthood in 2013, embarked on what the tabloids love to call a 'foul-mouthed tirade', using all sorts of four-letter words to describe the honours committee who have denied him his dream of becoming Sir David. And surely his wife's dream of becoming Lady Beckham. Not Lady Victoria, as the tabloids and most people on social media appear to believe she would become - unless she's the daughter of a duke, marquis or earl and forgotten to mention it.

Becks believes the honours committee is jolly well ungrateful (or words to that effect) for all the work he has done over the years, not least his efforts for Unicef as an ambassador - one of the celebs' most favoured routes to Buckingham Palace.

Blackmail rumours, injunction attempts and all manner of shenanigans have surrounded the leaking of 18.6m (yes, 18.6 million!) emails into the non-knighthood scandal. Blimey, Becks must spend so much time crouched over his computer bashing out irate, f-word-strewn emails about Katherine Jenkins's OBE, it's a wonder he has managed to do any charidee work at all.

This week, the football legend was on a damage limitation exercise, telling 'pals' he is just a normal bloke who was disappointed not to get a knighthood. Aww, the poor thing. How my heart bleeds for him. I know exactly how he feels. For I, too, am just a normal person; and I was also devastated not to find my name in the New Year's Honours list. For, in my mind, I must be due a damehood by now. After all, I have sold raffle tickets at loads of NSPCC coffee mornings, I go out to work, and I get my face in the paper every week. OK, I may not be married to a modern day fashion icon (unless M&S slacks and wool-mix V-neck jumpers count as couture these days), but I reckon I tick all the other boxes.

All of which brings us to the salient point in the 'Beckileaks' honours controversy. There is nothing 'normal' about being disappointed at not being made a knight of the realm. That sort of disappointment is reserved for the people occupying planet celebrity status. These people, no matter how nice they are, or how much charity 'work' they do (although you can bet your bottom dollar Becks has never stood on a street corner in the pouring rain shaking a Poppy Appeal collecting tin in the depths of November), consider the highest honours in the land to be nothing more than their due.

Beckham's apparent outrage at being denied a knighthood is misplaced; and a lot of that is down to the deep flaws in the honours system, whereby gongs are handed out to people for merely doing their jobs - such as Whitehall mandarins - or for merely being famous. The inevitable result of that is a most unseemly sense of entitlement, such as that displayed by Mr Beckham. Knighthoods should be earned. And earned properly. And they should be accepted with due humility and gratitude, not a huff and an 'about time, too!'

THE BBC's psychological drama Apple Tree Yard finished its highly acclaimed run this week. It was excellent - I think. I say 'I think' because half the time I couldn't actually hear the dialogue for the wildly irritating and intrusive background music, and because all the main actors - including the excellent Emily Watson - spent the entire time whispering as though they were secret agents.

My husband is driven bananas by background music on TV and, after struggling through Apple Tree Yard (he gave up halfway through the first episode), I agree with him entirely. Actors are supposed to project their voices, not mutter into their chests for what they clearly believe to be dramatic effect. And what is the point of background music that renders any dialogue largely incompressible?

Complaints about sound quality on television programmes are now constant - and almost always justified. So why do the production companies do it? Arrogance or ignorance - I'm not sure; but I am sure that the blight of background music needs to be banished. Luckily, thus far, news programmes have resisted the temptation to go down the same route. Although the state the world's in at the moment, maybe it would be a blessed relief not to be able to hear what's being said.

IF you're struggling to cope with the trauma of the lettuce shortage, stay strong. It will soon be over, normal growing conditions for summer vegetables (presumably summer) will soon be here and we'll all be able to get our hands on as many lettuces as we like - in order to throw them, rotting, in our bins after they've languished uneaten for three weeks in the fridge.

The rationing of iceberg lettuces has surely been a joke? But apparently not. One supermarket put a limit of three per customer - which begs the question how much salad can the average person wish to eat when the temperature is heading towards freezing? At this time of year, it's carrots, cabbage and sprouts all the way for me.

The best thing about the crisis has, of course, been all the lettuce-related jokes. From tips of icebergs, to titanic struggles, to blaming us Brits for not voting 'romaine' in the EU referendum, the puns and bad jokes have come thick and fast. I'm with those who put the shortage down to a conspiracy by disgruntled EU states who resent the Brexit vote. It's clear what they feel about us: they don't want to lettuce leave.