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’ve been asleep at the wheel on the M11, had an engine fire over the Atlantic in a light aircraft, driven unprotected through an enemy firing zone to do a gig in wartime Sarajevo – the list goes on and on. But I did have stage 3 throat cancer and was cured by some fantastic UK medics.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 July 2024 source ↗
In 2016, I fell off stage in Switzerland and broke my back in four places.
There are so many instances when I’ve come very close to death that it’s difficult to pick one.
In 1989, in Cuba, about to board a plane for Milan, where I was going to school for a year. The visa didn’t arrive in time, so I couldn’t board. The plane crashed and people died.
A piece of scenery fell on my head during Richard II at the Globe theatre in 2019. I was very badly hurt.
Runway 27R at Heathrow.
A Cessna Golden Eagle eight-seater aircraft. I flew it across the Atlantic both ways and did two US tours and two European tours in it. I finally sold it and got a job as an airline pilot in which I was paid to fly, rather than the other way round.
I once threw up on the shoes of one of my vocal heroes, the Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan. He sent me home in a taxi with a towel.
Procrastination.
“What makes you think you are so special?”
Well, I’m not too happy about snakes. I also hate sand. It’s very inconvenient.
Carl Barât, Michael Stipe, Bryan Adams, Beverley Knight, Andi Oliver, Rita Wilson
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