At 20, I fell from a fourth-floor window and broke my back. For four days they said I’d never walk again, but I had a miraculous recovery.

A death threat at Glastonbury festival in 1989. The police told me not to go on, but I said I had to because I was headlining. So I wore a bullet-proof vest. It seemed unlikely that I would be assassinated, but it was shocking and very stressful.

I had some gynaecological issues that were very sudden, about 18 months ago, and felt that I might be dying. I wasn’t but it was quite serious.

I’ve had a surprising number of near-death experiences: I was nearly blown up by a landmine in Sudan; I was stranded on the Zambezi river at night; I was bucked off a rodeo horse in Arizona and had to be airlifted to hospital; and, worst of all, I once ate a Pot Noodle.

Going off all technology.

I would have honoured my body, I would have lived inside it, cherished it and protected it.

In my 60s. So many things that tortured me when I was younger have fallen away. Writing The Apology, the letter I wrote in my father’s voice, apologising for abusing me, has freed me from the last vestiges of anger, confusion, rancour and hate. It released me from a frame that had determined my life.

As being useful.

That most men have not yet come to understand the impact and the devastating consequences of violence against women.