How close have you come to death?

So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.

Having a heart attack two days after my wife’s funeral.

I was invited to Sharon Tate’s house the night she was murdered. I declined the invite due to jetlag.

I’ve had cancer three times, but never felt close to death except when I walked between parked cars on my street and a car sped past my nose.

Making Apocalypse Now. I had a close call with a heart ailment due to anxiety, fear and physical abuse: I was not taking care of myself.

Brighton, 1984. I was in another hotel just a few yards away.

I can dodge the bullets – I’m lucky.

I was close to death, and I didn't rush into my spirit. I spent the time in the hospital just looking at the pipes on the ceiling. ... I failed because this was a trauma, a trauma, and I'm not reacting to it spiritually.

Having a gun held to my head at a May Day rally during the revolution in Grenada. I was mistaken for a CIA agent.

In April 2015 I nearly died, as my heart was finding it too difficult to keep my smoke-destroyed lungs going.

A car accident in Italy in 1990. Four people got killed. I was lucky, I got thrown out.

It’s nearly happened twice, each time after an operation.

Diving in the Virgin Islands. I lost sight of the boat and had to swim to a tiny, deserted island. After a great deal of time, the rescue boat saw me waving for my life on the rocks.

A plane to San Francisco, 25 years ago. There was a bang and I looked out of the window and saw flames coming out of one of the engines. We zoomed down to the airport below.

I had a cardiac arrest in 2010. I also had a close call in the early days in Cardiff when I was in a band called the Denims. We were in a van driving along a narrow mountain road. Somebody wanted to go to the toilet, so we stopped, and afterwards the driver took a wrong turn and we went careering down the mountain. Everyone was screaming, it was like a nightmare. At the bottom was the railway line, but the van stopped just in time. We were very lucky.

Twice I should have died in car accidents when both my cars were written off. I was completely unhurt; the cello was completely unhurt, too. A complete miracle.

When interviewing Idi Amin of Uganda in 1975, he shouted: “We have ways of dealing with people like you.”

Last year when I had a pulmonary embolism – it was a very scary time.

I’m getting closer all the time.

There are so many instances when I’ve come very close to death that it’s difficult to pick one.