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 Joan Jett said elsewhere, not written here
Right after 9/11, Kenny and I went to perform for the troops in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. As we were flying in, an electronic voice went off: “Warning: missile launch! Warning: missile launch!” The Taliban had fired a rocket at us. I was waiting to see the back of the plane blow up, but it didn’t and we landed.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 November 2020 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 210 →
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 ↗
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 ↗

More from Joan Jett

View profile →

More on death & what remains

Also answered this

Sheryl Crow, Jake Shears, Marc Almond, Rick Astley, Courtney Pine, Jo Nesbø

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer