Celebrity death rate isn’t unusual

While we have lost many famous people in 2016, the phenomenon can be understood

It is the question that many people are asking: has 2016 seen too many celebrity deaths? When you look at the roll call, it certainly seems that the year now coming to an end has seen more than its fair share of them. They included musicians Prince, David Bowie, Glenn Frey and Leonard Cohen, writers Harper Lee and Margaret Forster, actors Gene Wilder, Alan Rickman, Andrew Sachs, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Garry Shandling, astronaut John Glenn, politicians Boutros Boutros Ghali and Fidel Castro, and sporting greats Muhammad Ali and Arnold Palmer.

In the Arab world, we lost, among many others, the Egyptian actors Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, Sayed Zayan and Mamdouh Abdel Alim, Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, Syrian director Nabik Maleh, Lebanese singers Melhem Barakat and Mona Mohamed Maraachli.

The roll call of the famous is certainly long. But it is a stretch to say, as many have, that it is unusual.

The BBC addressed this issue by assigning its obituaries editor, Nick Serpell, to do some analysis. He began in April after it was first suggested that too many famous people have died this year.

Like many media organisation, the BBC prepares obituaries in advance for people whose deaths – in its editors’ opinions – will be significant enough to become major news items. Serpell compared the number of these prepared obits used in the first three months of the year to the comparable period in the previous four years. And he discovered that, by this reckoning, 2016 was indeed the “deadliest” year for well- known people. Only five prepared reports were used in the first three months of 2012, compared to 24 in 2016.

However, Serpell continued his work and has found that, so far, the number of deaths in the rest of the year has been about the same as in previous years.

So there was, indeed, a spike in celebrity deaths in the early part of 2016. But that is only based on this metric. There is an inherent bias in who the BBC – the British public broadcaster – decides is famous. Some people on its prepared obituaries list – for example comedians Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood and Caroline Aherne, magician Paul Daniels, broadcaster Terry Wogan and television writer Carla Lane – were not widely known outside their home country.

If we accept that there has been some spike in celebrity deaths in 2016, then what are the influencing factors?

It could, of course, be mere coincidence. Or it could be the simple fact that the cult of celebrity is relatively new and that those people who we determine to be celebrities are beginning to reach the age that it is normal for people to die.

With few exceptions, those well-known people who have taken their last bow this year have been of an advanced age. In the case of some names on the list, it could be said that the hard-living associated with some forms of celebrity may have exacerbated their demise.

If this is the case, then – inevitably – the number of celebrity deaths will be high again in coming years as more and more famous people grow old.