Regions where people most often reach 100-110 years old are the ones where there’s the most pressure to commit pension fraud, and they also have the worst records. For example, the best place to reach 105 in England is Tower Hamlets. It has more 105-year-olds than all of the rich places in England put together. It’s closely followed by downtown Manchester, Liverpool and Hull. Yet these places have the lowest frequency of 90-year-olds and are rated by the UK as the worst places to be an old person.
I mean I’m sure he hopes for a real Nobel one day, but I’m sure he took this as a wonderful consolation prize.
I think he found the knighthood thing embarrassing mostly. He said he started to explain why he got it to the queen and she couldn’t have been more disinterested.