Tess Daly: 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 Tess Daly said elsewhere, not written here

On a motorway three years ago. An HGV hadn’t seen me and pulled out. My father-in-law’s a truck driver and he said black cars are not very visible. I don’t drive them any more.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 December 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

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Adam Peaty British swimmer; Olympic champion 2016 and 2021

I was on a cliff in Dartmoor, doing a Royal Marine abseil. I fell upside down and thought, “I’m going to die here.”

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 January 2022 source ↗

Louis Theroux British and American journalist and author

I don’t think I’ve ever been close to death but I am a nervous flyer, especially during turbulence, so there have been many times where I’ve felt that I was.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 November 2018 source ↗

Diana Athill Editor and memoirist

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.

Recorded The Guardian, 23 September 2014 source ↗

Zack Polanski