getting an undeserved medal

Recently I was awarded a gold medal. Of course, it isn't really gold, just gold-plated but it is solid silver underneath, which is most gratifying. As I was awarded it last year but only collected it a few weeks ago, when the Winter Olympics were still underway, I felt like strutting about claiming to have been moonlighting on the Bobsled team but at the time I thought that Olympic gold medals were genuinely solid gold.

Subsequently on a TV trivia programme, I learned that they also were merely gold-plated but they are probably bigger and heavier than mine. Also, they have a convenient loop on them so they can be worn round the neck for decoration, whereas I have to carry mine around in a box and badger people to admire it.

Which I did for about a week. Then it occurred to me to admit I had been presented with it in advance of the performance for which it should have been awarded, so now feel rather fraudulent, although in fact I had no idea when I applied for some research funding that a medal was in the offing. To then be given it on the strength of the funding application, rather than the resulting research - or even a completed report on that research - is a bit questionable.
Nevertheless, they'll have to prise it from my cold dead fingers, if they decide I am not worthy. Yes, even if the committee are not satisfied with the report which I will write sometime - oooh - sometime this summer.