Always flying: we’ve had flights where the engine’s been on fire; where we’ve nose-dived.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 March 2024 source ↗
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.
Always flying: we’ve had flights where the engine’s been on fire; where we’ve nose-dived.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 March 2024 source ↗
Before I was DPP, I did a lot of work trying to get rid of the death penalty in various countries, and one was Malawi. We’d been in court in Zomba and had to get a plane in Lilongwe, about 200 miles away. We got a local taxi: the guy changed his wheels for the journey because the car wasn’t roadworthy and then hurtled at speed, mostly on the wrong side of the road. I’ve never been so terrified.
I went on a private jet with David Hasselhoff, and it was so turbulent between LA and Vegas I thought it was going down. I also thought: “The headline won’t be about me; it will be: David Hasselhoff and friend.”
Childbirth. And the wheel of our camper van coming clean off on the M1.
On a flight between Beijing and London with Team GB divers. There was a fire on the plane. We landed on a long-abandoned strip in Siberia. Two days later, the same flight attendants told us we had beaten the odds by surviving.
Kind, funny, moany – I do love a moan.
I’ve apologised to my son, Thomas, for being absent for quite a lot of his first few years, but, as a working mother and breadwinner, I kind of had to be. I like to think I’ve made up for it.
Persevering with a career that was predicted to last six months and still being here four decades later.
Can’t remember.
Sleep apnoea and tinnitus.
As the dark-haired bird from Bananarama.
Ronald Harwood, Alison Moyet, Julian Clary, Milton Jones, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Graydon Carter
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