The question

What is your greatest fear?

Originally asked

Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire

The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Billy Idol

Singer and songwriter

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I nearly lost my leg and things like that, my life and my leg, you know? So (laughter) yeah, so gradually through the '90s, early 2000s, I was gradually trying to get off drugs, really. That's what I was doing, you know? I'm glad I'm like this today because I wouldn't be here talking to you. I would be probably either dead, in prison or gone crazy.

A Martínez, NPR, KVPR, 24 March 2026 source ↗

Others on this question

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Joan Rivers Comedian
Being poor—or, worse, having Kelsey Grammer fight with Teddy Kennedy over who is to drive me home.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, September 2014 source ↗
Malala Yousafzai Education campaigner; co-founder of the Malala Fund; United Nations Messenger of Peace
Losing my family. And fear that the world won't become a better place.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, July 2019 source ↗

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