Some say, given a literal-mindedness in honours distribution that evidently benefits individuals who have come top in running races or who regularly act being haughty, that it was Dame Joan's interpretation of Queen Rat in the Birmingham Hippodrome's Dick Whittington that secured her place on the latest list.
But although many of the parts, not least Julian Wadham's shrewd, pragmatic Theseus, are well played, it is Dame Judi who supplies the necessary magic.
For years, it was Dame Thora Hird.
If there is one cast member whose career trajectory will remain steady, of course, it is Dame Maggie Smith.
Each year, the ITI invite a leading figure to issue a World Theatre Day message, and this year it was Dame Judi Dench.
There are times when, if I close my eyes, I can almost imagine that it is Dame Maggie Smith herself sitting at our dinner table and saying, "I don' wanna eat it!
It was Dame Felicitas Corrigan, a close friend at the end of his life, who best expressed the full range of his achievement when she wrote to Sassoon the year before his death: "To me you are a 20th-century portent: you have summed up in your personal experience the war-tortured, spiritually-bewildered, forsaken and blindly-seeking men of our times".
It is Dame Vivienne Westwood and Sir Elton John and it is Grace Jones hula-hooping at the Diamond Jubilee.
"That's Dame Helen Mirren," Mr. Baldwin explained.
