How close have you come to death?

But in a flash there came across me a great project. The chine which the bridge spanned was full of young fir trees. Their slender tops reached to the level of the footway. 'Would it not' I asked myself 'be possible to leap on to one of them and slip down the pole-like stem, breaking off each tier of branches as one descended, until the fall was broken?' I looked at it. I computed it. I meditated. Meanwhile I climbed over the balustrade. My young pursuers stood wonder-struck at either end of the bridge. To plunge or not to plunge, that was the question! In a second I had plunged, throwing out my arms to embrace the summit of the fir tree. The argument was correct; the data were absolutely wrong. It was three days before I regained consciousness and more than three months before I crawled from my bed. The measured fall was 29 feet on to hard ground. But no doubt the branches helped.

This is a lot harder for you than it is for me. If you had gone to bed as many nights as I did in the old days knowing that you had taken so much stuff that could kill you and not knowing if you would wake up, this is not as shocking as you think.

Near head-on collision driving from Oklahoma to California back in the 70s.

Scuba diving in Costa Rica. My stunt double and I were trying out some equipment that let us talk to each other and I ran out of air at 80ft - probably because I talked too much. I had to use his air. Then we were surrounded by sharks. It was scary.

It is a very rare affliction. A GP would expect to meet it once in a career and this form of brain cancer is unpredictable and dangerous. Usually, this tumour might give you only a two-year span since its discovery. I have had two operations and one course of radiotherapy and now three chemotherapies (one currently starting). My death is, in a sense, imminent. I say to myself: I am dying. Something in my head is hurrying to kill me.

In a helicopter crash in Wyoming in 2005. My cameraman broke his back and both legs; the pilot broke his back. The helicopter didn’t catch fire, so I’m still here today.

When a pal grabbed hold of me as I fell into an unbanistered stairwell at a rave. Would have been curtains, but for his sharp reaction.

On a plane with Meryl Streep in 1984: the engines blew and we had to make an emergency landing.

When I was 13, I was on a bicycle and got hit by a taxi in New York.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, but so early that I knew it wasn’t a death sentence. Until we get a cure for cancer, early detection is our best hope.

When I was doing my gold swimming badge. I had to get undressed in a swimming pool and had forgotten my gym kit, so the teacher gave me a kit two sizes too small. In the water, I got my arms up over my head to get the shirt off and they locked. I sank to the bottom of the pool and sat there until a girl jumped in and dragged me back up again.

I made a solo attempt at the Matterhorn in 1996 and came very close to falling. I waited until the dawn light came, so I could retrace my route, but I was hanging off my ice axes for 45 minutes.

I was an air display pilot for 15 years, and watched most of my friends die in crashes. When the children came along, I got out of it.

I had a gun shoved in my eyeball in New York by a crack dealer in the 1980s. I have also watched somebody next to me get shot in the head in a gun battle – that was in Jamaica in the early 1990s.

A death threat at Glastonbury festival in 1989. The police told me not to go on, but I said I had to because I was headlining. So I wore a bullet-proof vest. It seemed unlikely that I would be assassinated, but it was shocking and very stressful.

Fifteen years ago, a bacteria went to my heart. For three days they didn’t know if I was going to live or not.

On a school trip to Wales when I was 12. My canoe capsized and got stuck upside down next to a rock. I was underwater for about 30 seconds but it felt a lot longer.

In my dreams: I’ll feel as if I am falling towards a white light and then suddenly I wake up.

Being driven across the Atlas Mountains in a snowstorm 25 years ago, by a local taxi driver who plainly put a lower premium on the advantages of living than me.

In 1995, I discovered I had two brain tumours. The process of having them removed went on for about three years. It was a long and drawn-out time, wondering whether or not I was going to die.