"Famous,” my first, old-school sub-­editor used to groan when I had ignored her edicts and handed in copy describing someone as the “famous” writer/sportsman/actor. “Either,” she would say, with the strained patience of a primary school teacher, “they are famous, in which case I will know their name already, or they are not. In the first instance, you telling me they are famous is redundant, and in the second it is inaccurate, but in both cases your use of the word is plain wrong.”

Reluctant to follow this admirable logic, for reasons that now seem incomprehensible but must have had something to do with being 21 and imagining I knew better, I tried to dodge it by substituting “well known” or “celebrated”. But each time my typed sheet arrived back (yes, this was 1984 and in the offices of The Tablet, the Catholic weekly that gave me my first job, we were eagerly anticipating the arrival of our first fax machine, a freestanding unit the size of a kitchen cupboard), there was a red line through the offending adjective. Eventually I learnt.

I still think of Margaret Mullen, not just as a way of guarding against sloppy prose, but also to wonder how her rule would cope with today’s army of individuals who are famous/well known/celebrated only for being famous/well known/celebrated. Presumably by refusing to afford them column inches, impeccably logical but probably enough to get her sacked if she hadn’t retired long ago.

Her words have echoed in my ears twice in recent weeks. The first concerned an art exhibition a friend reported visiting, which was described as being by “one of today’s most celebrated artists”. Margaret would have crossed that out. My friend admitted to wanting to shout out: “But is he any good?”