"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.”