LEGENDARY football boss Sir Alex Ferguson has eight, actress Dame Judi Dench has 15 and comedian Julian Clary has one.

Sir David Attenborough has a whopping 32 and even Oz pop singer Dannii Minogue, more famous for being Kylie’s sister than for any great musical contribution, has one.

I am talking about honorary doctorates, those pretendy qualifications which allow famous people to add ‘Doctor’ to their name without having done any of work normally required.

Ed Sheeran is the latest in a long line of musicians, footballers, comedians and actors to be awarded one – he was given an honorary doctorate from University Campus Suffolk in Ipswich this month, to mark his ‘outstanding contribution’ to music.

I like Ed Sheeran. I like his songs, and his attitude. I like the fact he does stuff for local charities near his house and speaks out against bullying and tweets happy mother’s day messages. But a doctorate for outstanding contribution to music? When I think of outstanding contributions to music, I think of Beethoven and Joni Mitchell. The Beatles and Evelyn Glennie. The bloke who invented the piano. Ed Sheeran? Not so much.

Of course, liberally chucking honorary degrees at celebrities like sweeties at a panto audience is one way sure-fire way of getting your university a bit of publicity – having Billy Connolly or Bob Geldof lining up beside the rest of your graduates is bound to make it into the newspapers.

But what’s this whole honorary doctorate thing all about, anyway? The ‘official’ dictionary definition is: “conferred as an honour, without the usual requirements or functions” – without, in other words, any of the ruddy hard work that goes into achieving the qualification by actually studying for it.

The Campaign for Real Education want to see an end to the practice and I'm with them on this one. It’s always been a bit controversial – the first one recorded seems to have been in Oxford in the 1470s, when the university fancied courting a man of great influence (Lionel Woodville, who was the Dean of Exeter and the brother-in-law of Edward IV) who went on to return the favour by becoming chancellor of the institution.

I know people with PhDs, and I know how hard they worked for them – long, long hours in the library and late nights at home, reading, researching, reporting.

I know people studying for degrees while juggling the demands of home life, family and a full-time day job, and I see the sacrifices they make to hold it all together.

And I’ve met people who have overcome massive financial and health-related obstacles just to get to university in the first place.

It doesn’t seem quite right, therefore, that a whole bunch of people famous for doing their jobs quite well on the telly should be rewarded with an academic freebie and letters after their name.

And yes, I know that many of them don’t ACTUALLY use the title, and that everyone understands it’s not real…. but in that case, what on earth is the point?