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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.

Others on this question

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Jenny Diski Novelist and essayist
The print size in my mind decreased with time’s incremental decline, and as I arrived at the last word – weeks – it suddenly struck me, with all the force of the fullest sense of the word ‘struck’, that this could actually be his answer and not just the logical next time period in my sentence. Every cell in my body, except those responsible for maintaining a reasonable, calm exterior, was now lindy-hopping at that possibility, the only one that hadn’t occurred to me until that moment.
Recorded London Review of Books, 11 September 2014 source ↗
Paapa Essiedu British actor
In 2016, the moment my agent rang me to tell me I’d got the part of Hamlet for the RSC. While I was on the phone, I looked to my left and turned to the right, and a bus whizzed by and the wing mirror was so close to me that it knocked my hat off.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2023 source ↗
Joseph Fiennes English actor
Climbing in Tibet, surfing in Australia and a moment ago by a courgette cutter as I dithered over one of these questions.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 October 2008 source ↗

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Anna Friel, Martin Clunes, Charles Dance, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Adam Peaty, Jenny Diski

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