The question
How close have you come to dying?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.
Horse riding in a steep canyon in Los Angeles. A couple of paparazzi had hidden under camouflage blankets and when a horse sees a lens, he thinks it’s the eye of a predator. My horse flipped out. When he landed, I ended up on his neck; that was pretty close.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 May 2021 source ↗
Before transitioning, I had a severe eating disorder. The doctor said, “Your body’s shutting down and if you don’t improve your mental and physical wellbeing, you’ll die.” Shortly after that, I started transitioning medically and my eating disorder resolved.
About five years ago, a half-tonne tree branch fell and missed me by three feet.
When I was a kid, travelling from Ethiopia to the UK, the plane door opened, the oxygen masks came down and the plane did an emergency landing in Egypt.
In the 1990s in New Jersey, being driven to a radio station early one morning. Our driver fell asleep and we were on the other side of a dual carriageway with cars coming at us. We all screamed and banged on the seat, and he woke up and pulled the car back across.
Michelle Obama. Her girls were massive fans of So You Think You Can Dance and we were invited to the White House for the Easter egg hunt. She was even more brilliant than you imagine, and we bonded over a love of Beyoncé.
To anyone I have lost touch with. It happened purely by accident as life took over.
Art. I recently bought a Sean Scully painting, I have a Damien Hirst, a Tracey Emin, a Polly Morgan snake and a couple of Jonathan Yeos.
Heart explosion.
Bruce Dickinson, Felicity Jones, Jared Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Bobby Gillespie, Laurence Fox
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