Are we turning our national icons into buried treasures?

Sir David has topped a poll in a survey of 4,000 people who were asked by Euromillions to vote for their greatest living treasure from a short list – nominating the person whose face they would most like to see on a mythical £1m note. Attenborough beat the ubiquitous but lovable Stephen Fry (second), Sir Paul McCartney, physicist Stephen Hawking and Sir Bobby Charlton. In the mix are also Dame Judi Dench, Harry Potter creator JK Rowling and Sir David’s older brother, the actor and film maker Sir Richard.

While they are all I’m sure, terribly nice and certainly very talented people in their field who have almost all benefited from great longevity in it, there is something cringeworthy about the whole idea of being ‘a national treasure’. National treasures used to be exclusively inanimate objects of great historical worth – Stonehenge, Magna Carta, York Minster – and if you must include humans, at a stretch you might attach the title to dead-but-worthy recipients like Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale or Gracie Fields.

When did the term become so bandied about and adulterated that the likes of pop star Cheryl Cole, rapper Dizzee Rascal and TV presenter Fern Britton suddenly appeared on such lists a while ago? Cole is known as a very pretty pop princess with a fairly ordinary voice, a TV talent show judge who cries a lot, a footballer’s ex-wife - and for assaulting a cloakroom attendant. Britton is a pleasant, cheerful, talented TV presenter who omitted to say she’d had a gastric band fitted to aid dramatic weight loss.

Rascal has made some good music but is only 25 – which is clearly not old enough to be national treasure, even if you like the idea. The poor hapless people who are branded with this badge have no say in the matter, but will suddenly find the tag attached to their name in newspapers, magazines and in introductions on talk shows.

Dame Judi probably spoke for many others when she heard herself so described and said: “I don’t like that very much, I’m afraid.

“That sounds pretty dusty to me. It’s Alan Bennett and I behind glass in some forgotten old cupboard.”

The thing about national treasure-type people is that most are not the sort to make much of a fuss about it, even though they loathe the label. Niceness is often one of their most potent characteristics. Treasuredom is not like a knighthood or CBE that you can discreetly turn down without embarrassment if the thought makes your toes curl and you’d rather not buy a new hat.

Some celebrities who’ve found themselves lumbered with the title have complained, quite reasonably, that it makes them sound as though they’re almost dead, which can’t do much for offers of work. Should there perhaps be generally accepted criteria, if we are to have this ludicrous title used – if only to keep out the Coles and Rascals? Should we restrict it to a certain age group of people who have enriched our lives in some way, and maybe ask nominees if they mind being thought of as the human equivalent of a mummy’s tomb? These are thorny issues – to bandy another awful phrase.

“The term ‘national treasure’ does make me cringe,” says Alistair Billam, lecturer in journalism and media and expert in cultural theory at Huddersfield University. “And yet such lists are one of those guilty pleasures. You’re always interested in who’s on it, even if it’s just the usual predictable suspects – the really obvious candidates.

“I have nothing against any of them, but where is Mick Jagger? Not there because he’s seen as a rebel? Why is Sean Connery there, but not Michael Caine? But, even forgetting any other reservations, look at the imbalance of gender and ethnic origin. And if you were to try to set criteria for such a list, then I would suggest national treasures should be people who have fought and succeeded against the odds.”

What’s most odd about this list of usual suspects, though, is the omission of Bruce Forsyth... who would embrace the title and take it for a foxtrot.