Here Comes The Knight! Sir Van Picks Up Honour

Van Morrison, the singer behind Brown-Eyed Girl, described himself as just a "blue-eyed soul singer" as he collected his knighthood from the palace.

The legendary Irish singer was knighted by the Prince of Wales for a musical career that has lasted more than 50 years.

George Ivan Morrison was introduced as Sir Ivan Morrison as he stepped forward to receive his honour in Buckingham Palace's ballroom.

After the event, he said: "It's amazing, it's very exhilarating, the whole thing.

"For 53 years I've been in the business - that's not bad for a blue-eyed soul singer from east Belfast."

The knighthood is for services to the music industry and tourism in his native Northern Ireland and Morrison said he was still committed to live performing. "I enjoy that the most - playing a small club - that's really what I do.

"The bigger places you have to do for financial survival reasons, let me put it that way, but the bigger places enable me to play small clubs occasionally."

He added: "Sales of CDs and stuff like that are very unreliable, it has really gone down a lot, I'm lucky I can still do live gigs and still pull crowds and be able to do that.

"All these years of work have paid off and I'm still able to do that now.

Asked by Prince Charles about his future, the musical knight revealed: "He was just saying, was I still writing? And he said: 'You're not going to retire any time soon?' And I said: 'No, I'm not, I'm going to keep it going while I can'."

The 70-year-old performer's songs blend his influences of R&B, blues, jazz, and country to produce a style that is noticeably his own.

His greatest hits range from Baby, Please Don't Go and Gloria, written during his time with band Them, to solo efforts including Moondance, Sweet Thing and Have I Told You Lately.

His classic album Astral Weeks regularly makes it into the list of top 100 albums of all time.