Benedict Cumberbatch to receive CBE honour

SHERLOCK star Benedict Cumberbatch is to receive a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, according to reports.

Benedict Cumberbatch is to receive a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Picture: PA

Cumberbatch, who missed out on the best actor Oscar to Eddie Redmayne earlier this year, has accepted the award, according to The Sun.

The awards will be officially announced on Friday night.

Cumberbatch was a steadily successful but still relatively unknown actor when he picked up the deerstalker and signed on to play master sleuth Sherlock Holmes in the BBC’s updated take on the classic crime stories.

The show made him a star around the world, with fans from China - where he was dubbed Curly Fu - to the studios of Hollywood who marked him out as one to watch.

They soon signed him up to star in Star Trek: Into Darkness and 12 Years A Slave, with both films benefiting from the attentions of his global army of fans who jokingly refer to themselves as ‘’Cumberbitches’’.

They also flocked to cinemas to see him as tortured code-breaking genius Alan Turing in The Imitation Game - the role that won him the leading actor Oscar nomination against Redmayne.

Cumberbatch, who is expecting his first child with wife Sophie Hunter, has not always seemed comfortable dealing with the scale of his fame. He was forced to complain when a star-struck neighbour started tweeting his every move, and hordes of fans - often in costume - flock to every Sherlock event from around the world.