It reads like the plot of a spine-chilling horror film, such as Final Destination — a man who somehow escapes plane crashes, bomb blasts and near-certain death at every turn.
Yet rather than a screaming Hollywood heroine, this real-life escape artist is an ordinary, divorce dad from Bognor Regis with an extraordinary tale to tell.
Steve Potts, 71, first cheated death back in 1974. A regular at the Horse and Groom in Guildford, Steve could typically be found at the bar most weekends, particularly on a Saturday night.
On Saturday, 5th October 1974, however, Steve was elsewhere — attending a wedding nearby in Guildford.
Steve said: "I'm not religious or spiritual or anything, but do feel I may have a guardian angel watching over me. And I'm very happy it continues, I may say.", reports the Daily Star.
"One of the rare Saturdays I was not there the IRA bombed that pub plus another one called the Seven Stars, killing and injuring a lot of innocent people. By sheer chance I was at a wedding reception in Woking that night about 8 miles away so I dodged a bullet then."
And so his first brush with death passed. By 1980, Steve had been married for just over a year.
Though the couple have long since divorced, at the time they frequently enjoyed free weekend breaks courtesy of his wife's employment.
She worked for a now-defunct holiday firm in Bognor Regis and one day rang Steve at work, asking whether he fancied a spontaneous few days in Tenerife, with spare seats available on a flight departing Manchester the very next morning. This aircraft was the Dan Air Manchester flight that crashed in Tenerife, becoming the deadliest aviation disaster in British history, claiming all 146 lives on board.
With their tickets booked and prepared for the long drive north from Surrey to Manchester, the couple began to reconsider, reasoning that while the original flight would land closer to their hotel in the north of the island, the journey to the airport was far from ideal.
Steve said: "I said yes, and we were both booked on to go and all was well but very late in the day she called and said 2 tickets are available from Gatwick on another plane but into the south Tenerife airport so we would have to transfer up to-the north area so it was 50/ 50 what to do, almost a flip of a coin. But we decided to go from Gatwick and travel to the North area by transfer. That decision saved our lives."
Steve discovered his second brush with death in the most unremarkable of circumstances.
He went on to explain: "Two days into the holiday we saw a local guy reading a paper with pictures of an air crash on it. We asked a waiter and he explained what had happened and we realised it was the plane that we were originally due to fly out on and sadly all those poor people had perished on that plane."
The newspaper made no attempt to soften the blow of the tragedy, with Steve's alternative fate laid bare across two full pages, starkly and unmistakably clear. He recalled: "From my distant memory, I sort of remember that they were not very censored in those days in Spain. The images were very graphic It was a very, very sad thing for them and their families.
"I never forgot how fate sometimes can be so close to making the difference between life and death. I was very scared to fly back after seeing the story in the local papers and the pictures of the crash. It was scary. I think from memory it was only my third flight ever in my life so it had a very big effect on me then and for a few years afterwards.
"I always tried to remember my ex-RAF father's advice that flying is hugely safer than driving up the road in a car. I trusted his advice."
Steve explained that reading about the crash decades later helped him grasp the full scope "of this terrible tragedy and the loss of so many lives that terrible day in 1980."
Then came Steve's third and final stroke of fortune. Fourteen years had passed since the Dan Air disaster and 20 since the initial IRA bombing in 1994.
On this occasion, Steve had his children with him. He was placing his groceries into the vehicle in the car park directly behind Woolworths when "an enormous explosion went off."
He recalled: "It was so loud and scary as shop windows were shattering."
The IRA had planted a device containing 2.5lbs of Semtex concealed within the pannier of a bicycle secured to the cycle rack outside Woolworths.
Steve said: "That definitely shook all of us up but thankfully nobody was killed or injured including my family thank God."
It appears misfortune may strike in threes, as Steve, now retired, enjoys a peaceful life by the seaside in Bognor Regis, and more than 20 years have passed since his last near-death experience.