I worked in a paper factory at five o’clock on a Saturday morning when I was in my early 20s. I’d go out raving the night before, get an hour’s sleep and then go to the factory. I was covered in paper cuts and used to think I heard people talking to me; they gave me a lot of breaks because they thought I was going mad.
What is the worst job you have done?
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What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
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Relationships
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How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
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What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
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Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Laying down slabs for the council.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 December 2016 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 229 →Gulliver’s Travels at Adelaide Fringe.
In South Africa I washed cars, I danced in parking lots and shopping malls, and was a children’s entertainer.
David Hasselhoff
American actor, singer, and television personality
Selling fire alarms at 18 or 19.
More from Irvine Welsh
View profile →I haven’t achieved anything of note yet.
When you can barely stand to look at someone without turning away to catch your breath.
When a pal grabbed hold of me as I fell into an unbanistered stairwell at a rave. Would have been curtains, but for his sharp reaction.
There’s been the odd beauty on the dance floor I really ought to have gone home with.
Artists who do their own thing, without compromise: Ken Loach, Bob Dylan and James Kelman.
Happiness is mostly intrinsic: you’re either a happy soul or a miserable bastard. Fortunately, I’m the former.
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