Singer Lennox ‘humbled’ to become chancellor

ANNIE LENNOX spoke of how she wished her parents had been there to see her as she was installed yesterday as the chancellor of a Scottish university.

The singer-songwriter said she was “humbled and awed beyond measure” to be appointed to the ceremonial role for Glasgow Caledonian University.

She added: “I only wish my parents, grandparents and greatgrandparents could be here today to witness this special occasion, as it would have filled them with pride and disbelief.”

During the ceremony at the Glasgow campus, she pledged to further the university’s mission to promote the common good.

I only wish my parents could be here to witness this special occasion. Annie Lennox, on becoming chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University.

The Aberdeen-born Eurythmics star is the first woman to take on the role, succeeding Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammed Yunus, an anti-poverty campaigner who founded the micro-lending Grameen Bank.

Ms Lennox told the audience that she did not have a degree but she was “an honorary graduate from the school of life”.

“I come from a long line of hard-working Scots from the times when class boundaries, economic identities and gender roles were very firmly established,” she said. “Young women from working-class backgrounds gaining university degrees were as rare as kangaroos in the Antarctic.”