The writer Aldous Huxley died without anybody really noticing. The same was true of C.S.Lewis, though he has more than made up for it in headlines since. The passing of both was eclipsed in the news by the assassination of President John F.Kennedy, which happened on the same day, November 22, 1963. What is more, in the view of some religious bigot posted on the Internet, "they all went to the same place: Kennedy went to hell because he trusted in the Roman Whore. Huxley went to hell because he trusted in himself alone - and his hybrid Eastern mystic notions. And Lewis went to hell because he invented a new god, and he ended his life a Taoist".

An interesting subject for reasoned debate, I am sure. Meanwhile, let me note a couple of instances which further illustrate the tendency of famous people - indeed, people famous for the same thing - to die at around the same time. There was also Noël Coward, for instance, whose demise neatly coincided with that of his close friend, the legendary impresario Binkie Beaumont. He was the boss of theatre company H.M.Tennant and a man famous for his use of the casting couch - male candidates only please! The Spectator's scurrilous gossip columnist Will Wasp - aka Auberon Waugh - was the only person brave enough to point out that an unhealthy homosexual stranglehold on the theatrical profession had loosened. But poor old Bron, of course, saw gay conspiracy everywhere, as had his once-gay dad.

It was odd, too, that one of the world's most famous women, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, should have died even as another, Diana, Princess of Wales, was about to go to her grave. The saintly Mother T. was perhaps the only other person - well, excluding of course The Queen - who could have expected to share space on the front pages with Diana's funeral.

Last summer afforded another good example of the tendency when the death of the great Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman was followed within hours by that of Michelangelo Antonioni, one of Europe's very few directors of comparable stature. What a stroke of luck that was for cinematic pundits eager to boost their holiday funds with a few £300-a-time telly tribute appearances.

And now - scarcely three months apart - we have had the deaths of Alan Coren and his chief rival to the title 'humorist', Miles Kington (pictured). It is a title, I suspect, that few others would wish to aspire to - how trying, how challenging, to be billed as a professional wit. It is certainly one, as far as I am concerned, that this pair did not deserve. I read little by either of them that raised more than the weakest smile; indeed, very long ago ceased reading them altogether. Eulogists queued up last week to pay their tributes to Kington but 'the best of' examples they could muster were pretty poor stuff. Simon Hoggart, in the Guardian, for instance, thought it hilarious that he had invented a magazine called Levin!, to read while you are working through an article by Bernard Levin. "Most of us could have sat on a desert island for a year without coming up with that gag."

Most of you perhaps, Hoggart. But a genuinely funny writer - the great Craig Brown, say - could have come up with 20 better jokes per hour, and without needing insular inspiration.