Boney M star Liz Mitchell has said being made an MBE “feels like a message from above” because her late father was proud to share the same honour. The original lead singer of disco group Boney M has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the King’s Birthday Honours list for her services to music and to charity. The 71-year-old told the PA news agency that her late father Norman Mitchell, who was part of the Windrush generation, was “so proud” of becoming an MBE in 2014 for his charitable work.
Boney M achieved global success (Alamy) “I got the news actually after the service (for her father). I think if I’d gotten it before, I might have made mention of it because my dad was so proud of his MBE. “It was a dream for him, come true.
He loved the Queen so much.” Mitchell said she “could not believe it” when she was told of the honour as “everything is so raw with me because my dad just passed and the MBE was so important to him”. “It’s right in the moment of my mourning my father, it’s just amazing,” she told PA.
“It’s feels like a message from above. I don’t understand it, but it feels like something unique has happened in the atmosphere that I can’t explain.” Her father, who arrived in the UK in 1955 and founded the West Indian Senior Citizen Organisation in 1980 in a bid to help the elderly Windrush Generation, celebrated his 100th birthday in 2021 before he died recently.
Liz Mitchell in 2007 (United Archive.