The question
How close have you come to dying?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
In 2006, I went fishing for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way back, one of the engines caught fire and then we had one engine for 70 miles. Slowly but surely, we got to Baton Rouge in the darkness but then got very close to a very large passing ship – they didn’t see us and we didn’t see them.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 November 2024 source ↗
I’ve been to two postmortems in real life, and spent the last 14 years talking about death at work – so, pretty close.
When I had cancer. I was having a shave and thought: “Are you meant to have a big hard lump on one side of your neck?”
I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, but so early that I knew it wasn’t a death sentence. Until we get a cure for cancer, early detection is our best hope.
My sister saved me from drowning. I shouted at her because she pulled me out of the pool and hurt my arm.
I cleaned the toilets at the local pub every Saturday morning.
Full of passion and laughter.
That moment in Bilbao in 2020, when I tried to cross the street and did a pirouette and suffered a dreadful break in my right leg, which means now I have 10 screws and a band in it.
Unfriendliness.
One horrible afternoon in Chicago when I forgot my words in The Marriage of Figaro, in a role I’d sung hundreds of times.
Absolutely nothing.
Sue Perkins, Martin Kemp, Craig David, Kate Nash, Shaun Ryder, Emma Bunton
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