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.
We were doing a tour in Japan and as our plane landed, it rose again, out of the blue. About 10 years later there was this programme about 10 of the nearest misses, and it was my flight. There was another plane on the runway and we nearly landed on top of it. I didn’t know until 10 years later.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 September 2022 source ↗
When I was five and the doctors walked in and said to my mum: “I am not sure if you will be taking him home.”
Hitchhiking across Australia as a teenager, relying on the kindness of passing serial killers.
A flight from Paraguay to South Africa that went badly wrong. The plane nearly fell out of the sky and the oxygen masks dropped. People were screaming but the pilot saved the day, and then apparently never flew again.
After the war, when I was about nine, we were held up in our home. The robbers grabbed my father and had a gun at his throat. It was terrifying. My mother got a wad of money and gave it to the people, and they ran away.
A saxophone for £8,000.
When I realised that I could be a musician. I was 16.
I am not studious enough. I get easily distracted.
When my new-born daughter Cleopatra died and I wasn’t there. I was doing a US tour and I remember sitting down in an airport and losing it.
I would have spent more time practising and got a proper lawyer to sort out my first album contract.
Sue Perkins, Martin Kemp, Craig David, Kate Nash, Shaun Ryder, Emma Bunton
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