MAN who taught thousands of students in Huddersfield has today been honoured by the Queen.

Ron Marlor, of Holywell Green, has received the MBE for services to education in the Queen's New Year Honours list.

"I am surprised, humbled and honoured," said Mr Marlor, who lectured at Huddersfield Technical College for 40 years before retiring in 2003.

He has also been a governor at Cliffe Hill School, Lightcliffe, and has chaired the body for 29 years.

Mr Marlor has also been a judge in the National Teaching Awards since 1999.

He studied education at Leeds University and started lecturing at Huddersfield in 1963.

Mr Marlor is married to Marion and the couple, who live at Old Lindley, have three sons - Richard, Paul and John - and three grandchildren.

* The chief executive of a Brighouse-based licensee's union has been awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours list.

Tony Payne, 71, is chief executive of the Federation of Licensed Victuallers Association, which represents licensees.

Mr Payne, of Leeds, has been given the CBE for his services to the licensing trade. He has worked for the FLVA since it formed in 1992. He also worked for its predecessor, the National Licensed Victuallers Association.

He said: "When I opened the letter, I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't sleep that night.

"I never expected anything like this for just doing my job and being happy."

Mr Payne said the other workers at the FLVA deserved credit for his CBE, as well as his wife Barbara.

* West Yorkshire's deputy chief constable Philip Brear has been awarded the Queens Police Medal.

Her was appointed Deputy Chief Constable in November 2000, having joined West Yorkshire Police as Assistant Chief Constable in1998.

He is married with two teenage children.

BRITAIN'S heroic Olympic gold medalists - headed by Kelly Holmes, Matthew Pinsent and Tanni Grey-Thompson - take pride of place in the Queen's New Year Honours List, published today.

Holmes, who won the 800 metres and 1,500 metres in Athens - to become the first Briton for 84 years to achieve an Olympic middle-distance double - is made a dame.

Just weeks ago she was named the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Rower Pinsent, who led Britain's coxless four to the narrowest of victories - thus becoming one of only five athletes to win gold at four successive Olympics - gets a knighthood.

There are awards for the other British gold medalists - including a damehood for Grey-Thompson, regarded as Britain's greatest-ever Paralympic athlete, who secured two more golds at Athens.

The list also honours stars from showbusiness and figures from literature, arts, business and journalism.

There are awards for veteran actors Eric Sykes and Anna Massey, as well as for Tom Wilkinson, of Full Monty fame, and for the lugubrious TV sitcom star Geoffrey Palmer.

Ray Cooney, author of many Whitehall farces, and John Sullivan, writer of the hit TV series Only Fools And Horses, are honoured.

In the world of music, rock icon Roger Daltrey and pop Svengali and X-Factor pundit Pete Waterman figure in the list.

Honours also go to Dr Michael Foale, who became the first Briton to walk in space, to the man who invented the automatic cash-dispenser, John Shepherd-Barron, to golfer Colin Montgomerie and to veteran broadcaster Alan Whicker.

All these rub shoulders with a host of "ordinary people", many of whom have been nominated by their local communities.

Andy Farrell, the Great Britain and Wigan captain, gets an OBE for services to rugby league.

He announced that he would not be resigning as Great Britain captain after the team's thrashing by Australia in the Tri-Nations final in November.