Kate Ashbrook

What has footpath campaigner Kate Ashbrook in common with the Queen, David Cameron and Page Three model Keeley Hazell?

They all figure in a new Green List compiled by the Independent on Sunday, a roll-call of environmental luminaries voted on to the register of champions of our planet by a bunch of environmental journalists. Ms Ashbrook, chairman of the Ramblers’ Association and general secretary of the Open Spaces Society, figures at number 66; the Queen scrapes in at 100.

Elizabeth Windsor’s son Charlie fares a little better, being listed at number nine. Surprisingly, Dave Cameron, the Tory leader who has repainted his party in greenwash, pips Ms Ashbrook – ‘the high-priestess of countryside access’ – at position 40. Bill Bryson, famed author of Notes from a Small Island and now president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, languishes at 97.

Hints that the list might not be taken too seriously come from the positioning of Damien Hirst at 32 – how green is slicing up sheep and zebra and using all that formaldehyde? – and James Murdoch at number eight.

Bill Bryson, CPRE president

On a more sensible footing are the National Trust’s director general Fiona Reynolds and Sustrans leader John Grimshaw.

Judges were: Nicholas Schoon, editor, the ‘ENDS Report’, an environmental journal; Alex Kirby, former environment correspondent of the BBC; David Randall, assistant editor, Independent on Sunday; and Geoffrey Lean, environment editor of the IoS.

Full details are on the Sindy’s website.