Monty Don: How close have you come to death?

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.

Recorded Monty Don said elsewhere, not written here

Despite a stroke, cancer as a child and various dramas with chainsaws and tractors, the closest was probably when I choked on a lamb chop 25 years ago. Sarah performed the Heimlich manoeuvre and the lamb shot out.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 5 May 2018 source ↗

Others on this question

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Justin Hawkins

A flight from Paraguay to South Africa that went badly wrong. The plane nearly fell out of the sky and the oxygen masks dropped. People were screaming but the pilot saved the day, and then apparently never flew again.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 March 2025 source ↗

Paul Heaton British musician

Again, too many times to mention, but probably being swung from the balcony at the top of the Columbia hotel in London by the bodyguard of a Saudi Arabian princess was fairly close.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 May 2020 source ↗

Tom Lubbock Art critic

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.

Recorded The Observer, from the journals he kept between 2008 and 2010; published on the Guardian website under the title 'When Words Failed Me', 7 November 2010 source ↗

Bobbi Brown

When I got hit by a car in my home town.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 October 2025 source ↗