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.
Horse riding in a steep canyon in Los Angeles. A couple of paparazzi had hidden under camouflage blankets and when a horse sees a lens, he thinks it’s the eye of a predator. My horse flipped out. When he landed, I ended up on his neck; that was pretty close.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 May 2021 source ↗
A plane to San Francisco, 25 years ago. There was a bang and I looked out of the window and saw flames coming out of one of the engines. We zoomed down to the airport below.
I had heart surgery when I was 17. The other time was when I fell off my piano. My head was an inch away from a metal step.
When I rode on the back of a motorbike from London to Rome with my eyes closed the entire way.
I made a solo attempt at the Matterhorn in 1996 and came very close to falling. I waited until the dawn light came, so I could retrace my route, but I was hanging off my ice axes for 45 minutes.
Michelle Obama. Her girls were massive fans of So You Think You Can Dance and we were invited to the White House for the Easter egg hunt. She was even more brilliant than you imagine, and we bonded over a love of Beyoncé.
Art. I recently bought a Sean Scully painting, I have a Damien Hirst, a Tracey Emin, a Polly Morgan snake and a couple of Jonathan Yeos.
Heart explosion.
To anyone I have lost touch with. It happened purely by accident as life took over.
Mark Steel, Siobhán McSweeney, Jack Davenport, Jon Sopel, Nuala McGovern, Christopher Hitchens
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