In the past few days, three more have been taken.

My insidethegames colleague Mike Rowbottom wrote brilliantly about the most famous of this triumvirate - England and Manchester United footballer Sir Bobby Charlton - yesterday, so I will confine myself to an anecdote from my time as a political reporter in the 1990s.

It was the autumn party conference season in the days when these events still tended to be held at seaside resorts beginning with the letter “B” - basically Blackpool, Brighton or Bournemouth.

After a busy day of mingling and speech-watching, our entire team was due to dine with a Cabinet Minister - the then Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, as I recall - at a lovely restaurant in a relatively quiet spot outside town.

After working on a late-breaking story, I was last to arrive and opened the door to a crowded room of diners, including Hurd and doubtless other household-name political figures of the era.

I was not much surprised to hear a sharp intake of breath from the party walking in right behind me.

Then came the words, “Look - it’s Bobby Charlton!"

Even in a room sprinkled with powerbrokers, there was no doubting who was the real star.

Football fans may or may not be aware that a dozen years ago, Charlton founded a charity, the Sir Bobby Charlton Foundation.

This focuses on civilian populations impacted by war, in particular the often-devastating legacy of landmines.

Readers may consider it a fitting time to make a donation.

Two days after Charlton, another idol of my childhood, the Indian spin bowler Bishan Singh Bedi, passed away.

I suppose it was his turban that caught my child’s eye.

But there was a timeless grace about his guileful, properly slow left-arm bowling that regularly bamboozled some of the best batsmen of his day.

Bedi was a key member of the 1971 Indian tourists who achieved India’s first Test series win in England.

While cricket was about to embark on a period in which extreme pace would dominate, this Indian squad was blessed with a superabundance of top-notch and mutually complementary spinners.

Besides Bedi, there was Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, whose rapid leg-spin did more than anything to secure the decisive victory in a 1-0 series win, as well as off-spinners Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkataraghavan, later a well-known umpire.

Bedi also became a popular figure with Northamptonshire in the English County Championship.

It is only recently that I have come to realise how big a role in cementing my love of sport in the 1960s and 1970s was played by the third giant we are mourning this week, Gerry Cranham.

Cranham was not an elite athlete, but a brilliant, pioneering sports photographer.

Flick through the photographs on this website, or pick up a copy of the This Sporting Life photobook and there is a good chance, if you are anything like my vintage, that you will recognise just how many of the images that have lodged in your mind from these early days of sport’s television age were captured by Cranham.

Horseracing was among his specialities and, luckily for me, the 1975 Grand National in Liverpool was one of the events he attended.

The winner of that race - L’Escargot, ridden by Irish jockey Tommy Carberry - is the subject of my most recent book, which is graced, thanks to the good offices of Gerry’s son Mark Cranham, with several of the great man’s photographs.

It was also lucky that the start was delayed by a quarter of an hour, giving Cranham unexpected extra time in which to put together a broader selection of shots than might otherwise have been possible.

A picture of five jockeys edgily waiting around a News of the World advertising hoarding superbly evokes the atmosphere of a strange afternoon on which much of the country was hoping that a horse called Red Rum would win an unprecedented third-consecutive National.

The charismatic jump jockey Terry Biddlecombe chose Cranham images for the cover of his 1982 autobiography Winner’s Disclosure.

The shot of Biddlecombe falling from his galloping mount Notification in particular is a classic, speckled with flying clods.

“Over the years,” Biddlecombe writes, Cranham “has established himself as a racing photographer with a difference.

“His eye for the spectacular has resulted in a stream of pictures which reflect steeplechasing and hurdle racing in a way that no other photographer has managed to achieve.

“The speed, power, colour and grace of horses and riders in action leap out of his photographs, which sometimes verge on the surrealistic.

“He is a great artist with his camera.”

Three lives brought together by the ways in which they lit up sport and the coincidence of them drawing to a close at almost exactly the same time.

Gentlemen, it was our very great privilege.