BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall appointed OBE
Veteran broadcaster Stuart Hall has been appointed OBE.
The Wilmslow-based BBC Radio 5live football summariser has been named in the New Year Honours list for his services to broadcasting and charity.
Physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, from the University of Manchester, have added knighthoods to their 2010 Nobel Prizes.
The pair, who developed the "ground-breaking" material graphene, have been honoured for services to science.
Hall, who celebrated his 82nd birthday on Christmas Day, said: "I am very proud that I have made a contribution. It's been acknowledged and lots of people around the world will be very pleased as my family is and I am too - very, very pleased indeed."
He added: "Lots and lots of people do great jobs throughout the world and receive no acknowledgement. So for a humble guy like me - Hadfield born and bred - to receive an honour is a great accolade."
Hall, who was the anchor for BBC North West regional news in the 1970s and 80s, was best known to wider BBC viewers as the face of It's a Knockout, the madcap contest in which teams from different towns had to compete in a succession of absurd tasks.
His guffaws at the contestants' calamities - often competing in large foam suits - became the show's trademark.
Hall is still a regular football reporter for BBC Radio 5live, where his eccentric match reports have a cult following among fans.
Russian-born academics Prof Geim and Prof Novoselov won the Nobel Prize for Science in October 2010 for their research on graphene, a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick which is almost completely transparent, but also extremely strong and a good conductor of electricity.
Another University of Manchester academic who has been honoured is Prof Mel Ainscow who becomes a CBE for services to education.
Melanie Bryan, from Wigan, who lost her job with a management consultancy firm three years ago, has been appointed OBE for her work revitalising charities, voluntary groups, small businesses and communities.
"I'm completely shocked, this seems to be my year of awards," said the 48-year-old founder of WhyNotChange, which won the Prime Minister's Big Society Award earlier in the year.
The designer and producer of the world's most expensive perfume, Clive Christian, who founded his designer furniture business in Nantwich in 1978, has been appointed OBE.
Among those becoming MBEs are Kirsty Ann Ashton, 21, who has raised more than £87,000 for the charity When You Wish Upon a Star, which supports sick and terminally-ill children throughout the UK.
She also raises awareness about the incurable genetic condition neurofibromatosis, which affects the nervous system and the skin, which she has.
Lee Craven, 41, who is registered blind, has also been appointed MBE for more than 20 years of voluntary work in Salford which began when he became a volunteer driver for Age Concern.
"It's a nice shock," said Mr Craven, who got involved in the New Deal for Communities in 1999 when his deteriorating eyesight meant he had to give up driving.
"Volunteering is a massive benefit to any community," he said.
Saki Chowdhury, an outreach worker with SureStart in the Longsight district of Manchester, has also been appointed MBE.
She said she was "delighted" with the honour but added that it was also for her SureStart colleagues and the people they serve.
The mother-of-three, who was honoured for her work with children and families, said: "Helping people is in my blood."