Getting knocked down by a bus. The experience left me with the exhilaration of life enhanced.

I was knocked over by a taxi in Liverpool when I was seven. And I fell off the seventh storey of a car park when I was 10 and broke both legs, my collarbone and my arm.

Nine years ago I discovered I had stage 3/4 uterine cancer and went through nine months of excruciating surgery, illness and chemotherapy. In that time, I touched death and it was the most powerful transformation of my life. I was forced to learn to take care of my body.

None of this was supposed to happen. At 38, I wasn’t supposed to lie on my back in the E.R. on a late December morning and be told by a teary radiation oncology resident that the pain I’d been having for two months — that I’d been assured was from having a weak core after months of chemo — was actually from a tumor that had devoured my L2 vertebra. John wasn’t supposed to have to hold me up on the toilet. Put my pants on for me. Do Christmas Eve for the children without me. I’m not supposed to be thinking about where he will sit and hold my hand as I take my last breath.

I splash out on holidays and scented candles – I’ve got one that my fiancee won’t let me light, so it’s just for show.

Still biting my nails.

Heights. For Children in Need, I had to abseil off the Orbit in the Olympic Park. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve done.

Katy Perry. I hired a Russell Brand lookalike as a joke for the radio, and she thought it was actually him. When she realised it wasn’t, she burst into tears. She was still married to him, but I didn’t take into account that there were things going on that we didn’t know.

Now. I’ve moved to Hertfordshire after 25 years in London, got a fiancee and a dog, so everything has fallen into place.

When I left Radio 1: full snotty sobbing on air.