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 don’t think I’ve ever been close to death but I am a nervous flyer, especially during turbulence, so there have been many times where I’ve felt that I was.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 November 2018 source ↗
In dreams, but that’s about it.
Despite a stroke, cancer as a child and various dramas with chainsaws and tractors, the closest was probably when I choked on a lamb chop 25 years ago. Sarah performed the Heimlich manoeuvre and the lamb shot out.
I’m getting closer all the time.
In 2016, I fell off stage in Switzerland and broke my back in four places.
To have made a career in TV while being nervous by nature and incapable of doing a piece to camera.
The Weird Weekends theme music: Mini Skirt by Esquivel.
To everyone who has been out with me and had to deal with my lack of emotional maturity.
There was a period in the early 2000s when I had been doing celebrity profiles and thought I’d lost my way creatively.
You suddenly get what people are talking about when they talk about being in love.
Winston Churchill, Keir Starmer, Gloria Steinem, Jon Snow, Desmond Tutu, Clive Myrie
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