About five years ago, a half-tonne tree branch fell and missed me by three feet.

I’ve had a surprising number of near-death experiences: I was nearly blown up by a landmine in Sudan; I was stranded on the Zambezi river at night; I was bucked off a rodeo horse in Arizona and had to be airlifted to hospital; and, worst of all, I once ate a Pot Noodle.

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement. I could faintly hear myself breathe but could not manage to inflate my lungs. My heart was beating either much too much or much too little. Any movement, however slight, required forethought and planning.

I’ve been to two postmortems in real life, and spent the last 14 years talking about death at work – so, pretty close.

Now. I’ve moved to Hertfordshire after 25 years in London, got a fiancee and a dog, so everything has fallen into place.

I splash out on holidays and scented candles – I’ve got one that my fiancee won’t let me light, so it’s just for show.

Katy Perry. I hired a Russell Brand lookalike as a joke for the radio, and she thought it was actually him. When she realised it wasn’t, she burst into tears. She was still married to him, but I didn’t take into account that there were things going on that we didn’t know.

Still biting my nails.

When I left Radio 1: full snotty sobbing on air.

Heights. For Children in Need, I had to abseil off the Orbit in the Olympic Park. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve done.