Advertisement

Celebrity deaths are on the rise, and will only continue to rise from now on

If it feels like 2016 has been a particular tough year for celebrity deaths so far, you're not wr...
Newstalk
Newstalk

11.47 21 Apr 2016


Share this article


Celebrity deaths are on the ri...

Celebrity deaths are on the rise, and will only continue to rise from now on

Newstalk
Newstalk

11.47 21 Apr 2016


Share this article


If it feels like 2016 has been a particular tough year for celebrity deaths so far, you're not wrong.

David Bowie, Terry Wogan, Alan Rickman, Ronny Corbett, Paul Daniels, George Martin, Victoria Wood, Maurice White and Doris Roberts are merely a handful of famous people who have passed away before we've even made it a third of the way through the year.

Celebrity deaths are a sad but regular occurrence, but they do seem to becoming more and more regular.

Advertisement

BBC Radio 4 had a look back over their celebrity obituaries in recent years, and found a startling discovery. In the first three months of 2012, they ran just five celebrity death notices. That number rose steadily in the following years, but the amount of notices that ran in January, February and March in 2016 was still higher than those in 2014 and 2015 combined - with 24 celebrity obituaries counted in total.

Unfortunately this trend is only going to rise as each month and year passes by.

The phenomenon of the Celebrity - taking from the Latin word 'Celebritatem' which literally means 'the condition of being famous' - isn't particularly a new, as historians range from it beginning with either the most popular gladiators in Ancient Rome, or perhaps having its roots in the emotional and social changes of the 18th century, when life itself was turned into a spectator sport.

However, due to ever increasing number of media upon which a celebrity can be enjoyed, has increased exponentially from generation to generation, meaning the pure awareness of celebrities is an ever increasing field. And as the number of celebrities continues to grow, so too will the number of celebrity deaths.

Not just with the regular movie, music and TV stars, the world will now have to begin to equip itself for the deaths of reality stars - something that has already begun after the passing of Jade Goody, but any and all X-Factor, Big Brother, Britain's Got Talent and countless other contestants on those shows are also now firmly implanted in the general public consciousness - but thanks to YouTube, Snapchat and general viral-based outlets, it all adds up to a hugely increased and constantly increasing number of celebrities.

So while the likes of Bowie, Rickman and co. were all reaching their sixties, seventies and eighties, they were all around just as the phenomenon of celebrity was only beginning to step up a gear or two.

As the years and decades pass by, celebrity death notices could eventually become a daily occurrence.


Share this article


Read more about

News

Most Popular