Paul Whitehouse
Welsh comedian
I was what I call a “nut lifter” in a factory in Enfield. I had to get nuts and bolts from the production line into big tins.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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.
When I was 17, I worked in a warehouse in Rotherham doing an audit of truck parts. I counted nuts and bolts all day long.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 September 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 229 →Mucking out pigs on a farm when I was 15.
Emma Bunton
British singer
When I was younger, I appeared in the Halifax adverts that featured a cake or a bridge made of hundreds of people. You stood there for three days and were not even really seen.
Mike Skinner
English rapper
Cleaning toilets in a motorway service station.
More from Tom Ellis
View profile →Every job I don’t get.
Barack Obama. On a daily basis he faced racism, and I admire him for trying to push through that to better his nation.
Airline tickets. I spend a lot on flying because I’ve three kids in the UK.What would your superpower be?To drink as much beer as I can without putting on weight.
Every time I let my wife drive.
A couple of days ago, saying goodbye to my children.
On a caravan site on a farm in the Brecon Beacons when I was a kid. I have three sisters and every year we met family friends with kids the same age. We would go to the river and make rope swings and build dens. It was very Enid Blyton.
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 192 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 67 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 66 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 63 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 46 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 41 answers
Also answered this
Roger Allam, Kiefer Sutherland, John Waters, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sue Perkins, Charlotte Church
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject