AS ANTISOCIAL behaviour officer for Oxford, PC Mike Ellis has had to deal with some characters over the years, but this ID parade might be the most unusual yet.

On Wednesday morning, the police officer was given the career-crowning honour of leading Oxford University's annual Encaenia parade.

It is the ceremony at which the university awards its honorary degrees, with recipients this year including Lib Dem peer Shirley Williams and architect Frank Gehry.

Tourists and locals stood and watched on Wednesday as the officer, dressed in traditional bobby's helmet and white gloves, led the procession from Exeter College, around Radcliffe Camera and into the Sheldonian Theatre.

The honour, however, is bitter-sweet: leading the parade is a duty awarded each year to a long-serving police officer who is coming to the end of their career, and when Mr Ellis announced he was to lead this year's procession, it was also his way of publicly announcing that he is to retire from the force after years of service.

Typically stoic, he simply told the Oxford Mail: "My area commander asked me to do it because, traditionally, it is an officer who is retiring.

"I was very honoured to be selected – it is the crowning moment of my career."

Mr Ellis began Wednesday morning by joining college heads in full academic dress for the traditional hob-nob in Exeter College's garden enjoying 'Lord Crewe's benefaction of peaches, strawberries and champagne'.

Nathaniel, Lord Crewe, an 18th century Bishop of Oxford, left money to the university in his will for this and other features of Encaenia.

After leading the procession to the Sheldonian in Broad Street, Mr Ellis, who was accompanied by his wife Rebecca, got a front row seat for the actual ceremony.

This year the university awarded seven honorary degrees.

As well as Shirley Williams – the Rt Hon Baroness Williams of Crosby – the university awarded a second doctorate of

civil law to American lawyer and civil rights campaigner Bryan A. Stevenson.

Frank Gehry, most famous for designing the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, was presented with a doctorate of letters alongside cultural historian Dr Robert Darnton.

Cardiologist Eugene Braunwald and molecular biophysicist Joan Steitz were both made doctors of science and Master of the Queen’s Music Professor Judith Weir was made an honorary doctor of music.