It's all too obvious to everyone that there has been a substantial increase in the number of celebritities who have died compared to previous years. BBC radio 4's More or Less programme had an article about this last Friday. They counted the number of obituaries that the BBC had written from January to March for the last 5 years:
2012 5
2013 8
2014 11
2015 12
2016 24
The programme looked at whether this was just a coincidence or was there a reason. They concluded that it wasn't a concidence. People who came to fame in the late 50s and 60s with the rise of rock and roll and increasing popularity of televsion are now getting into their 70s and 80s. Before the late 50s and 60s the best known people tended to be film stars. There are far more well known people in music and television than films.
Comforting explanation in a way. It seemed as if The Grim Reaper had a vendetta against the cultural greats recently.
