Remembering genius David Bowie and how he heralded 2016 - a year of exponential loss in showbiz history

One of my friends is a music journalist who has interviewed all the biggest names. I have long delighted in peppering him with questions. Who’s the worst mannered? Who’s really short? Who’s the most charismatic? To that last one, he said straight away: "David Bowie. Always smiling."

His words returned to me in the wintry dawn light of 11 January 2016, when the news arrived that Bowie had died the previous day. I’d been up all night live-blogging the Golden Globe Awards and was about to jump in a taxi to a TV studio. I still got there, but no one cared about the Globes any more. The talk was all of Bowie: what he’d contributed in 50 years of music, what he still meant, why fans across the world were sadly drawing red zigzags on their faces.

Unusual for anyone, such an outpouring of affection was remarkable for someone who had completed over half his musical catalogue 35 years before. Of the 26 studio albums that Bowie released during his lifetime, 14 were out by 1980. And there was that almost cheeky twist: his final work, Blackstar, was released just two days before his death, loaded with elegiac allusion and analysis of which could be added to the commentary around Ziggy Stardust and what Bowie himself listed as "the seven or eight things on a journalist’s checkcard: bisexual, drugs, likes cats".

What we didn’t know then was that, ahead of the curve as ever, Bowie’s death heralded a year of exponential loss, as one cultural behemoth after another fell off the branch – Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Alan Rickman, Victoria Wood, Debbie Reynolds a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher, Gene Wilder, Muhammad Ali.

A decade on from entertainment’s own annus horribilis, these figures remain as clear in my mind’s eye as they were then, their contributions unique, their legends unmatched because we don’t make, or treat, our stars the way we used to. There can’t be much more to say about them, but that won’t stop the 10-years-on documentaries reflecting on legacies, or fans tuning in again to relive greatest moments. It really was a terrible year for saying goodbye to talent, and any excuse to remember is a welcome one.

Fittingly, Bowie the great pop pioneer kicks us off, with dedicated nights on both Channel 4 and BBC Four and a wealth of material besides. Since his death, it has become clear everyone has their personal version of "music’s Peter Pan" with his theatricality, androgyny and talent for reinvention. Music purists rushed to laud his Berlin catalogue, irritated by fans who turned up later for his platinum-haired, Miami Vice-suited pop superstardom amid the Nile Rodgers riffs of Let’s Dance. Meanwhile, his widow Iman reminded us she married "David Jones, not David Bowie".

My own Bowie came through all the other stuff he shared almost casually: his beautiful speaking voice detailing how the internet would change the world ("we’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying," he told a sceptical Jeremy Paxman in 1999); declining a knighthood, saying it wasn’t what he worked for; stealing the show with self-parody on Extras, later replying to Ricky Gervais’s birthday message – "Isn’t it time you got a proper job?" –with, "I have a proper job. David Bowie, 57, Rock God."

How lightly he carried his own iconography and remained, as he told Paxman, "a curious and enthusiastic person". One life, many layers. Still inspiring 10 years on and, importantly, always smiling.

Read more: 'Lust is a great creative force': David Bowie reveals what drove him in exclusive interview

Add these shows to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.

Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.