claire mccolgan gets her MBE from the queen

By Catherine Jones on Oct 21, 09 01:24 PM

Good for Claire McColgan the head of Liverpool's culture department who went to Buckingham Palace yesterday to receive her MBE.
Claire, and co-artistic director Fiona Gasper who was also awarded the gong in the Queen's Birthday Honours, were rewarded for their work in pulling together the 2008 Capital of Culture programme.

While Phil Redmond may have been the figurehead and ultimately the driving force for the year itself, Claire and Fiona worked tirelessly in the background over several years to bring the culture dream to fruition.
They had to contend with the sudden departure of their boss Robyn Archer and all number of trials and tribulations, both political, financial and artistic, in the run up to 2008, but they still managed to deliver a great 12 months of activities. And they never lost their enthusiasm along the way.
Fiona has gone on to pastures new while Claire won the job of leading Liverpool into a post-2008 cultural world.
That role has had to be put on hold a little this year as she was pregnant at the time, but now the mum-of-two is about to return to the cultural fray.
She tells me the Queen said to her as she presented her MBE: "It must have been very hard work."
I swore to Claire I wouldn't divulge her rather tongue-in-cheek response, but the hard work goes on of course.