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.
Where do I begin? There have been a lot.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 January 2026 source ↗
In the early 90s, in the Andes, caught in an atrocious storm above 20,000ft with three others. We were all in a very bad way. Some guys close to us perished; we were lucky.
Every time I let my wife drive.
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.
Again, too many times to mention, but probably being swung from the balcony at the top of the Columbia hotel in London by the bodyguard of a Saudi Arabian princess was fairly close.
Caring too much about what others think.
Small things make me anxious – like social things – but I have no big fears because I have faith in my heart.
It’s all a gift. So be grateful for every day.
Becoming a father.
The Bare Necessities.
Faith-filled, never-give-up man.
Gloria Steinem, Tess Daly, Chris Hoy, Paul O'Grady, Adeel Akhtar, Elaine Paige
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