It's been held up as a particularly gloomy year for celebrity deaths.
David Bowie, Prince, Harper Lee, Alan Rickman, Nancy Reagan, Muhammad Ali, Sir George Martin, Leonard Cohen…
Back in April,
the BBC's Obituaries Editor Nick Serpell was tasked with checking if there was anything unusual about the number of well-known people dying, as many on social media had been claiming.
He counted the number of pre-prepared BBC obituaries that ran across radio, TV and online from January until the end of March for the years
2012-2016.
And at that point he found that,
yes, just looking at the first three months of the year, there had been a huge increase.
Twice as many notable people had died compared to the same period in 2015, and
five times as many as in 2012.
2012 ‒ Etta James, Davy Jones, Eve Arnold, Bob Holness, Whitney Houston, Neil Armstrong, Donna Summer
Robin Gibb, Ravi Shankar, Larry Hagman, Vidal Sassoon, Gore Vidal, Gerry Anderson, Andy Williams (
16 deaths)
2013 ‒ Frank Thornton, Richard Griffiths, Michael Winner, Tony Gubba, Hugo Chavez, Kenny Ball, Robert Kee, Richard Briers, David Coleman, Ronnie Biggs, Peter O'Toole, Nelson Mandela, Baroness Thatcher, John Taverner, John Cole
Lou Reed, David Jacobs, Sir David Frost, Seamus Heaney, Cliff Morgan, Mel Smith, Alan Whicker, Tom Sharpe (
24 deaths)
2014 ‒ Ariel Sharon, Run Run Shaw, Sir Tom Finney, Sir Christopher Chataway, Simon Hoggart, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Eusebio, Tony Benn, Clarissa Dickinson-Wright, Roger Lloyd Pack, Shirley Temple, Maya Angelou, Lauren Bacall, Richard Attenborough, Joan Rivers, Lynda Bellingham, Acker Bilk, PD James, Joe Cocker, Billie Whitelaw, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Eli Wallach, Saeed Jaffrey, Robin Williams, Rik Mayall, Sir Jack Brabham, The Lord Bannside (Ian Paisley)
Sir Donald Sinden, Jeremy Lloyd (
29 deaths)
2015 ‒ Geraldine McEwan, Richard Meade, Derek Chinnery, Lee Kuan Yew, Terry Pratchett, Demis Roussos, King Abdullah, Rod McKuen, Dan Topolski, Leon Brittan, Sam Simon, Leonard Nimoy, Richie Benaud, Jimmy Hill, Keith Michell, Sue Lloyd-Roberts, Omar Sharif, Cilla Black, BB King, Lemmy Kilmister, Warren Mitchell, Colin Welland, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Sewell, George Cole, Val Doonican, Christopher Lee, Hugh Scully, Baron (Geoffrey) Howe, Baron (Denis) Healey
Charles Kennedy, Nicholas Winton (
32 deaths)
2016 ‒ Ed Stewart, Baron (Cecil) Parkinson, Paul Daniels, Cliff Michelmore, Lord Avebury (Eric Lubbock), Nancy Reagan, Pierre Boulez, David Bowie, Frank Finlay, Alan Rickman, Sir Terry Wogan, Margaret Forster, John Chilton, Ronnie Corbett, Zaha Hadid, Barry Hines, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harper Lee, Sir George Martin, Robert Stigwood, Glenn Frey, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Tony Warren, Garry Shandling, Victoria Wood, Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs, Gene Wilder, Caroline Aherne, Muhammad Ali, Carla Lane, Prince, Sir Jimmy Young, Fidel Castro, Robert Vaughn, Arnold Palmer, Elie Wiesel
Shimon Peres, Burt Kwouk, Peter Shaffer, Greg Lake, Peter Vaughan (
42 deaths)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38329740
I don't remember hearing about that one at all.