Jake Shears: How close have you come to dying?

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.

Jake Shears

Singer and songwriter; co-lead vocalist of Scissor Sisters

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

Five years ago, a concrete plug, a little bigger than a baseball, fell off a building on Hollywood Boulevard when I was riding in an open convertible. It shattered the windshield. It really shook me. I still have it on my mantel.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 July 2021 source ↗

Others on this question

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Tess Daly English television presenter

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.

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

John Lewis U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966

On the Freedom Rides in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a state trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗

Terry O'Neill British photographer