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.
When I had a bicycle accident when I was 24. I was on a bridge going down; the bicycle broke and I smashed to the ground, face first. I broke my jaw and my teeth, and had to have plastic surgery. It all took half a year and then, funnily enough, I got my first big job – a TV series – with what I thought of then as this big, ugly scar.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 September 2020 source ↗
A motorbike crash. I broke my shoulder and ribs and was so scared I didn’t ride for two years.
Three squaddies on a train in 1995.
Just thinking about unsafe sex.
Last Christmas I was clipped by a train. Mum was dying so my head was elsewhere. I was walking home and had to cross one of those crossings that say, “Stop, look and listen.” I didn’t do any of those things, and I had my headphones in so I couldn’t even hear the train. It clipped my left elbow.
I spend most money on my garden.
Acting, when you don’t want to do it or you disagree with everything, is almost like having sex with someone you don’t like. I had one experience like that on stage, in a terrible version of The Cherry Orchard. I put on a wig, dark-coloured contacts and just hoped no one would recognise me.
My vain side would like to be remembered as someone who did good for others in some way. But I would be happy if my children remembered me.
Now. During the period of Covid, I have had the opportunity to rethink and I’ve got a new gift of cherishing now.
Warm and bubbly.
Lance Black, Eleanor Tomlinson, John Waters, Gemma Whelan, Martin Kemp, Omid Djalili
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