Bob Dylan honoured by Obama

President Barack Obama has awarded Bob Dylan with the highest US civilian honour - the Presidential Medal of Freedom

But Dylan was in no rush and left the president waiting as he took his time getting down from the stage to receive his award:

The President paid tribute to Dylan saying the 'modern troubadour' had a profound affect on him when he first heard his music while at university:

There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music.

I remember in college listening to Bob Dylan and my world opening up, because he captured something about this country that was so vital.

Other winners of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 are:

• Madeleine Albright - the first female Secretary of State
• John Doar - former assistant attorney general involved in civil rights cases in 1960s
• Dr William Foege - former director of Centers for Disease control who led efforts to eradicate small pox
• John Glenn - the first American to orbit the earth
• Gordon Hirabayashi - opposed the internment orders for Japanese Americans during WWII when he was a student in the 1940s. he died in January
• Jan Karski - Polish Underground officer was among the first to relate accounts of the Holocaust to the world. He died in 2000
• Dolores Huerta - a community organiser
• Juliette Gordon Low - founded the Girls Scouts in 1912. She died in 1927
• Toni Morrison - Pulitzer Prize wining author, she was the first African-American woman to win a Nobel prize
• John Paul Stevens - former Supreme Court Justice
• Pat Summit - former University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach and the all-time leader among NCAA basketball coaches
• Shimon Peres - former president of Isreal