SO Van the Man, the Belfast Cowboy, is now a Sir.

Sir Van Morrison? Sir George Ivan Morrison? Either way, it will take some getting used to. The fact that he once wrote a song entitled Here Comes the Night is an obvious gift to headline-writers.

The venerable 69-year-old has been recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours not just for his music - a distinguished, accolade-laden career that can be traced back to the 1960s - but also for services to tourism in Northern Ireland. The Van Morrison Trail - 'Mystic of the East' - was launched last year and centres on the east Belfast of his youth. Many of the locations - 'The Hollow', Orangefield Park, Cyprus Avenue, Hyndford Street - have become famous simply because Van has sung about them, evocatively, in the past. The East Belfast Partnership said that Morrison, George Best and CS Lewis were among the key reasons why visitors flock to this part of the city, with most probably lured there by the prospect of following in the singer's footsteps.

His 1968 album, Astral Weeks, recorded when he was all of 23, has become a timeless classic. His 1970s albums - Moondance, Tupelo Honey, Hard Nose the Highway, Veedon Fleece, the captivating live album It's Too Late to Stop Now - saw him at his most restlessly creative and influential.

Whatever the decade, his songs and his voice have had a lasting impact on many fans. As the noted critic Greil Marcus, who has authored a book on Morrison's music, wrote five years ago: "People take Van Morrison personally. Incidents from his music enter the events of their lives - events in their love lives, their family lives, births and especially deaths - and people feel as if he put those incidents in their lives. As if, in some way, he's there. Not in any magical sense - just in the manner in which art is supposed to work: it touches you. And won't let go."

The voice, too, remains a thing of wonder, as anyone who enjoyed his Celtic Connections show last January can affirm. In the words of this newspaper's critic, Van's "thick, chewy voice was in top form". Marcus (again) has made a pithy observation: "As a physical fact, Morrison may have the richest and most expressive voice pop music has produced since Elvis Presley, and with a sense of himself as an artist that Elvis was always denied."

Like Bob Dylan, Morrison has never lost sight of his musical roots - the musicians he adores, the musicians who have inspired him. He recently acknowledged his debt to Glasgow's Lonnie Donegan, the 'King of Skiffle', and recalled how, when younger, he had watched Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor on an old show on his black-and-white television. This Monday night, at London's Royal Albert Hall, in the company of Eric Burdon, Jools Holland and others, he will pay tribute to Lead Belly, the folk-blues legend Huddie Ledbetter, one of the formative influences on his music. Arise, Sir Van the Man.