WHO'D be a celebrity? At the rate they've been dropping off their perches in 2016, anyone even remotely famous must now be quaking in their boots and praying like the clappers for January 1 to arrive.

For what a year 2016 has been for losing famous people. The roll call of the recently departed is as impressive as it is sad. Terry Wogan, David Bowie, Muhammed Ali, Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Caroline Aherne, Prince and - this last week alone - Rick Parfitt, George Michael and Nana from the Royle Family. And that's just a small selection.

My blood ran cold on Christmas Day, I can tell you, when I heard the Queen hadn't been well enough to attend the church service at Sandringham. Thankfully, she and the doughty Duke of Edinburgh, 95 but remarkably robust, have made it through a traumatic year on the celebrity deaths front. Despite the spate of superstar deaths, it would be the demise of a 90-year-old great-grandmother which would truly be the death to tilt the world on its axis.

I'm sure it is not the case that we have lost more celebrities than ever before - merely that there are more famous people than ever before, so there are more of them to lose. But what a loss some of them are.

Who can believe that Victoria Wood will never put pen to paper again to create her marvellous comic characters or make hilariously mundane observations of the world around her? Or that we will never again hear the dulcet tones and beautiful blarney of Terry Wogan?

Scrolling through the many online photo galleries, one realises afresh how much talent has been lost in just one year. I had forgotten about Leonard Cohen, Corrie creator Tony Warren, Jean Alexander (aka Hilda Ogden), superlative journalist AA Gill, television scriptwriter Jimmy Perry and Man from U.N.C.L.E Robert Vaughan. The celebrity deaths have come so thick and fast this year, that it's been difficult to keep up.

I suppose we have to put many of the pop stars' deaths into some sort of perspective. Some of them - Prince, Pete Burns and George Michael spring to mind - have led such unashamedly excessive rock 'n' roll lifestyles that it isn't really so surprising they popped their clogs in their 50s. Status Quo's Rick Parfiit, who epitomised that lifestyle, did fantastically to make it to the relatively ripe old rocker's age of 68.

As always, it's the untimely deaths from cancer that seem so unfair; Victoria Wood, Terry Wogan, Alan Rickman, AA Gill, David Bowie and Caroline Aherne being just some of the soaring talents who have died far too young from this disease; illustrating so starkly that wealth, status and fame are no protection against this cruelly egalitarian killer.

Let's hope 2017 is not quite as startling as this year has been in terms of famous people's deaths; not least because those "slebs" left behind must be exhausted with all the tweets of gushing sympathy they've had to send out every time one of their famous (and, it goes without saying, "dearest) friends dies. Elton John and Madonna must have repetitive strain injury by now.

With three days still to go, of course, anything could happen - there's still plenty of time for another couple of stars to kick the bucket. On which note of festive cheer, here's wishing you all a very happy new year.