Tim Peake
British Army Air Corps officer and astronaut
Running out of options.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What scares you about getting older?
Time & hindsight
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What happens when we die?
Death & what remains
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
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.
To be stuck in the past.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 May 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →Becoming deaf and blind, which is what happened to my father.
Robert De Niro
Actor
My wife going on The Real Housewives of New York City.
Bruno Tonioli
Italian choreographer
Sheer drops, like a precipice.
More from Tom Burke
View profile →Having regrets and not knowing what to do about them.
I’ve not always been great friend material. I’ve tried to get better at that, so to be remembered as reliable by a few would be great.
A movie. Does it have a name? It might do.
You reach a certain point in life and suddenly know a lot of dead people, and I’ve noticed you don’t stop getting to know people who are dead. Those relationships continue and I like that.
Steady, reaching, bewildered.
Putting chocolate mousse in my agent’s face. Somebody had done it to me – that thing where they go, “Smell this, it smells funny”, and then they put it in your nose. A year later I was in this French restaurant with a very 1980s-style dessert trolley and, before I knew it, I had a bowl of chocolate mousse in front of me. And my agent went, “What’s that smell?”, and it felt impossible not to … I immediately felt awful and tried to apologise. He, of course, said that he found it funny. But I knew he didn’t.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 196 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 112 answers
- What are you most proud of? 104 answers
Also answered this
Sofia Coppola, Stephen Fry, Helena Bonham Carter, Cory Taylor, Sally Mann, Patrick Stewart
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