There’s a reason there have been so many celebrity deaths this year – and there’s more to come

IT was pretty clear 2016 was going to be a terrible year for celebrity deaths months ago, and sadly the number has only risen.

Willy Wonka star Gene Wilder sadly passed away at the age of 83 on Sunday, following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

His death comes after the loss of Caroline Aherne in July. The BAFTA-winning writer was just 52 when she lost her long battle with cancer on July 2.

We’ve also been forced to bid farewell to Muhammad Ali, Prince, Victoria Wood, David Gest, Ronnie Corbett, Terry Wogan and David Bowie – to name just a few.

The Daily Telegraph – which maintains a gallery of famous people’s deaths – states 121 have passed away already this year, which is just three less than in the whole of 2015.

Even worse, this isn’t a one-off thing. The number of celebrity deaths is actually set to increase every year from now on.

The explained why, describing the amount of significant deaths this year as “phenomenal”.

He said: “People who started becoming famous in the 1960s are now entering their 70s and are starting to die.

“There are also more famous people than there used to be.

“In my father or grandfather’s generation, the only famous people really were from cinema – there was no television. Then, if anybody wasn’t on TV, they weren’t famous.”

The morbid trend is therefore largely because today there are more celebrities than ever, but looking at the ages of 2016’s lost celebrities also goes some way to explaining the phenomenon.

Many of the stars we’ve lost in 2016 are from the baby boom generation, meaning that they were the first generation to experience fame in the era of TV.

Celebrity culture only took off in time for this generation to become swept up in it, which means that those in the first generation of the mass-celebrity era are coming to the end of their lives now.

Nick Serpell explained that the sad trend is only set to increase as this golden generation of early TV icons gets older.

He said: “Over the next 10 years, these people will get into their 80s and it is going to continue at this level.

“And that doesn’t count the surprise deaths, when people die that shouldn’t.”

So it seems we could lose even more of our favourite stars before the year is out.