A third of the way through the year, the media have got it into their heads that more famous people than usual are dying. I can hardly think this is true. As with other fairly random statistics, bunches sometimes seem to form.

In 1997, when I was an obituaries editor, within a few days, Diana, Princess of Wales, Jeffrey Bernard and Sir Georg Solti died. Then a cry was heard from a hard-bitten picture editor in the corner of the newsroom: “Oh no! Now bloody Mother Teresa’s gone and died.”

She’s to be St Teresa before the year is out, but this year’s secularly sainted celebrities are a mixed bunch. Much adulation was heaped on the pop singer Prince. In The Guardian’s round-up of memories, the journalist Adrian Deevoy wrote: “Prior to meeting with Prince, his people routinely told me that their charge was an instrument of God. So it seemed only fair to ask Prince if he was a conduit for a higher power. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I just practise a lot.’ ”