The two little letters before your name that mean so much

Does it really matter? Mr (sorry, Dr) McKenna obviously thinks so. The Guardian reports:

"After more than nine years of dispute, months of legal wrangling and huge costs on both sides, the entertainer and hypnotist Paul McKenna yesterday won his libel trial against the publishers of the Daily Mirror for suggesting he had knowingly obtained a "bogus" PhD from an American university.
"Much energy has been expended to very little purpose," was Mr Justice Eady's judgment on the case yesterday. "No doubt there would have been various windows of opportunity for sensible compromise and setting the record straight. Yet the parties seem to have been determined to fight to a standstill ... Costs are no doubt massive on both sides [yet] what all this has achieved is open to question."

PhDs always seemed kind of pointless to me, unless one was an academic; but then I don't have one...