An indeterminately hued bombshell has been dropped regarding the late artist Prince. His sister Tyka Nelson revealed that Prince’s favourite colour wasn’t purple. It was… orange. And this comes soon after the Pantone Color Institute announced a new shade of purple in Prince’s honour, Love Symbol No 2, saying it was “emblematic of Prince’s personal style”.

It’s quite sad to think of Prince, feeling bound by Paisley Park diktat, having to keep his preference for orange a lifelong secret, perhaps resorting to having the Colour Me Beautiful ladies secretly pop around to hold swatches up next to his face, to check which best suited his complexion.

Or, more likely, Prince was too busy producing genius pop-funk classics to care. Having conducted some “in-depth research” into the psychology of colour (I Googled for five minutes and then got sidetracked by a video of the 1988 Prince track, Alphabet Street), I discovered that purple is the colour of nobility and luxury, while orange denotes joy and creativity. So both fit. Besides, as someone who witnessed Prince do the splits live on stage more than once, I’m confident he was flexible enough to like both colours at once.