111. Certification: The Archaeology of a Box (16)

Delving down towards the bottom of my box I find a collection of certificates rolled up inside a tube originally sent to me by the LSE after I concluded a postgraduate year there in 1963-64. I was never one for framing such things and sticking them on the walls of my various offices so they are still in pristine condition.



Three of these certificates are self-explanatory.

The fourth certificate, my Honourary Dagg Award, is perhaps the most precious of them all. It will mean little to anyone who is not a Kiwi and was presented to me in the 1970s by the students in one of my first evening class courses for Auckland University's Centre for Continuing Education.

Fred Dagg was a hugely popular character created in the 1970s by film and television satirist John Clarke. Dagging sheep involves cutting away the dags (matted wool and faeces) on the sheep's bottom.