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.
I inadvertently rubbed the milky residue of a toxic cactus plant into my eye while filming Women In Love in the desert in Namibia, and my body went into anaphylactic shock as the producer sped me to a clinic 50 miles away.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 August 2017 source ↗
On the Freedom Rides in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a state trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die.
My recent battle with cancer.
I’m getting closer all the time.
Doing a compulsory standup routine in my first week of drama school.
That will depend on when and how I die, but you couldn’t beat The Birdie Song to set the right tone.
Finding cucumber in things is a continual disappointment.
My mother. Any child of a single parent, if they are in a relationship when they become a parent, thinks, “How the hell did you do it alone?”
Finding your place.
Last week I saw a moorhen feeding her chicks, and became overwhelmed by the miracle of parenthood and maternal sacrifice. And I hadn’t even been drinking.
It’s a toss-up between organising a new filing system at Hammersmith & Fulham social services and relying on tips in the least popular restaurant in London to get through drama school.
Martin Kemp, Dan Stevens, Omid Djalili, Sue Perkins, Lance Black, Gemma Whelan
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