How close have you come to death?

An emergency landing in a snow storm in Philadelphia.

Climbing in Tibet, surfing in Australia and a moment ago by a courgette cutter as I dithered over one of these questions.

We used to have one of those gat guns that shot pellets. My friend pretty much had the thing at point-blank range to my temple. It popped out and completed its trajectory about a millimetre from my head.

None of this was supposed to happen. At 38, I wasn’t supposed to lie on my back in the E.R. on a late December morning and be told by a teary radiation oncology resident that the pain I’d been having for two months — that I’d been assured was from having a weak core after months of chemo — was actually from a tumor that had devoured my L2 vertebra. John wasn’t supposed to have to hold me up on the toilet. Put my pants on for me. Do Christmas Eve for the children without me. I’m not supposed to be thinking about where he will sit and hold my hand as I take my last breath.

I was caught by a wave while swimming at night with friends in Southampton. That shook me.

On a camping holiday in Scotland when I was nine: I was in an inflatable dinghy that drifted out to sea. A lifeboat had to come.

I inadvertently rubbed the milky residue of a toxic cactus plant into my eye while filming Women In Love in the desert in Namibia, and my body went into anaphylactic shock as the producer sped me to a clinic 50 miles away.

Have you seen my documentaries?

Probably on a Los Angeles freeway.

I fell off a ladder, landed on my back, got up and was fine.

Ten years ago, I went to visit my dad in Australia. I walked to the edge of a cliff and looked over and tripped. I righted myself but my head was over the edge. No one saw it.

In 2012 I stared into the eyes of someone who had just stabbed a man in the neck on the street. I was trying to help the victim; for a very long three or four seconds, I thought he was going to come for me next.

I was in a car crash when I was 16, and I have a little scar on my face from smashing the passenger window with my head. If the car had rolled, I would have been dead.

I had heart surgery when I was 17. The other time was when I fell off my piano. My head was an inch away from a metal step.

I was very ill with anorexia when I was a teenager. I went into hospital voluntarily, otherwise they were going to section me.

I choked on a hard-boiled lemon sweet when I was 13. My brother Sam saved me.

Falling off what we in Middlesbrough call a “tarzy”, a bungee rope. I was swinging on it, fell and broke my arm.

I don’t know. I prefer it that way.

Maybe the night we drove a Hummer in Kabul and went to a cafe that Osama bin Laden supposedly used to frequent.

When I was young, I was pretty reckless – my 20s were quite hedonistic. I don’t know whether I’ve been close to death, but I may have been without realising.