Bearing in mind this had been cobbled together in the two weeks since Malcolm McLaren’s death, and was fronted by the ubiquitous Alan Yentob, it could have been a dog’s breakfast of a programme. But it did manage to pinpoint various elements about Malcolm rather accurately, for those of us lucky enough to know him. One aspect which came through was his rather child-like quality. Probably the best story about him that his assistant for many years Sarah Bolton told me at a dinner after his funeral last week was how Malcolm was a huge fan of The Sooty Show – whenever it came on, work would stop and they would quite often find themselves rolling on the floor in hysterics.

Bearing in mind this had been cobbled together in the two weeks since Malcolm McLaren’s death, and was fronted by the ubiquitous Alan Yentob, it could have been a dog’s breakfast of a programme. But it did manage to pinpoint various elements about Malcolm rather accurately, for those of us lucky enough to know him. One aspect which came through was his rather child-like quality. Probably the best story about him that his assistant for many years Sarah Bolton told me at a dinner after his funeral last week was how Malcolm was a huge fan of The Sooty Show – whenever it came on, work would stop and they would quite often find themselves rolling on the floor in hysterics.

We have lost one of the great cultural catalysts of our time, a brilliant provocateur, a different kind of artist. Malcolm McLaren was a dear friend, who will be painfully missed – we spent, for example, Millennium Eve together with a few friends in France. When Malcolm hit on the “serious joke” of running for Mayor of London in 2000, he roped me into being his agent. It was a lost cause, of course, but at times it was a surreal and often comic adventure. But then one of his favourite sayings was “Any fool can be a benign success, it takes real courage to be a failure”.

Britain's most communicative singing actor, lyric-dramatic tenor Philip Langridge has died at the age of 70. I offer a personal reminiscence, looking back on some of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life, and ask conductors Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner and Vladimir Jurowski as well as director Richard Jones what Langridge's example has meant to them.

Comic and reality TV star Jason Wood has died at the age of 38. Wood was a genuinely popular comic among fans and within the industry, and was for many years an Edinburgh Fringe staple. His comedy relied on his distinctive voice and astonishingly accurate impressions of male and female divas - from Dame Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand to Johnny Mathis and Neil Diamond. In 2004 he had the dubious honour of being the first participant to be voted off the first series of Strictly Come Dancing, which was later won by Natasha Kaplinksy. But Jason liked to turn setbacks to his advantage: he was once given a stinging one-star review at the Fringe by The Scotsman and he simply added "A star - The Scotsman" to his show posters.

His agent released a statement saying that Wood died in his sleep last Saturday night and that a postmortem was being carried out.

The redoubtable and always stylish Russian mezzo-soprano Irina Arkhipova, who died a week ago at the age of 85, still has a song to sing about the prolonged winter we're enduring. Among many roles in which she plunged in true Slavic fashion to contralto depths was that of the shepherd-boy Lel in Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden). This "Spring fairy-tale" is about how we're destined to carry on shivering until the Snow Maiden, daughter of Frost and Spring, melts at the first rays of love. Here's Arkhipova in a fine old Melodiya recording of Lel's first song, wondering whether the wild strawberry can survive the continuing cold snap.

I’m no folky but I fell for the songs of Kate and Anna McGarrigle the moment I first heard their album Dancer with Bruised Knees, and it’s remained a companion ever since. It never struck me that their songs and the eclectic backing music was "folk", as it was often categorised; the tag presumably arose from Kate’s accordion and banjo playing, their acoustic guitars and, of course, the French-Canadian chansons they sang at home as children - and thankfully introduced to the rest of us.

But regardless of definitions, when Kate sat at the piano and Anna played guitar, or they swapped places and instruments, as far as I was concerned, they were simply fine musicians with strong, distinctive voices, and their songs were personal, quirky, poignant and poetic. Kate’s high, sharp pitches were matched by her unpredictable capacity to burst into shrill open-mouthed laughter onstage and set off Anna and the whole band, and the audience with it. Her quick, droll humour was evident in their between-songs banter, which presumably started when they were children. But singing was a serious business, and rising together, their voices created exquisite, unusual harmonies possible because of those long, close, intuitive connections. Floating above the room, they wove translucent sculptural shapes which swelled into richer, more substantial forms or separated off on different currents before coming together again. It’s unbearably sad to imagine the remaining voice singing alone.

I played Dancer with Bruised Knees over and over, partly for the lyrics which I always assumed had autobiographical undercurrents, but also because of how its songs linked to my own experiences. The title track depicts a dancer feeling safe that her partner would always catch her - until he let her down. Hence the bruised knees. We’ve all been there, and that includes Kate’s experience with her former husband, Loudon Wainwright III. "First Born" - about her son Rufus, surely? - tells of a mother’s silver-spoon treatment of her boy. Its universal appeal is one of the key attractions of her songs. I still find "I Eat Dinner" an almost unbearable description of a solitary life and of eating alone. When she sings “I eat leftovers with mashed potato” she’s almost mocking the curious habits lone diners develop, and with “No more candle-light, romance, small talk… I never thought it would end up this way,” she conjures a bereaved or divorced eater (herself after the Wainwright separation?) - and that single place-setting. Even if you’re locked in coupledom, there’s always a widowed mother or divorced friend waiting to appear before you as you listen.

The McGarrigles’ audiences always had a strong female presence. Over the years, I felt that their lives, as sung about, moved and changed in parallel with my own, and judging by the cheers and laughter, they certainly chimed with many in their audiences. At first, their appeal for me was partly seeing two women playing instruments, singing mostly their own songs, and running the show -  up there and in control. Their interactions were fascinating and unusual: confidently letting private jokes catch in the microphone as they tuned up, little asides about how they looked, and in later years, mocking themselves lightly for their new glam look, the sparkly scarves and glinting ear-rings and that once taboo accessory for us feminists, lipstick. It was a way of unselfconsciously and effortlessly drawing us into the close web they created between themselves; that’s how they transformed every concert hall into a family living room much like the one at home where they sang with their parents as kids, and Kate repeated with her own.

My favourite McGarrigle memory is the concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London, where Kate introduced Martha for the first time (pictured, from left: Martha Wainwright, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, Kate McGarrigle, Bruce Cockburn, Anna McGarrigle and Rufus Wainwright). The awkward teenager in a mini-dress shifted around on long skinny legs like a nervous colt, kept moving around her mum for reassurance, and then when she sang, bending and writhing her legs – as she still does in her marvellous performances with her own band – she let go of a voice so mature, it was ready for the world. Her mother listened with eyes shut then she joined her, making their own, quite different harmonies from those with Anna.

Kate McGarrrigle died of sarcoma, a type of cancer, on 18 January, at her home in Montreal. She was 63. Anna sent an email message out to the world that "she departed in a haze of song and love surrounded by family and good friends". They were packed into her room, singing to her as she slowly passed through onto that mysterious journey. Her departure, of course, leaves a terrible space in the songs which Anna will have to reconstitute, but with Martha’s new baby and her own and Rufus’s voices assured and loved, Kate died knowing that the void would be filled in a different, bright and certainly a McGarrigle way.

Official website of the McGarrigles.

Overleaf: watch a clip from a documentary about the McGarrigles