Courtney Pine
British jazz musician
I would have spent more time practising and got a proper lawyer to sort out my first album contract.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
There was a very large part of my 20s where I was an alcoholic, and an addict. When I lost my dad to cirrhosis, I knew that the only difference between us was that, tragically, he couldn’t stop whereas I could.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 June 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
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Philip Gould
Political strategist and pollster; architect of New Labour
When I thought maybe I've just got a few weeks, I thought God this is what they mean by the reckoning. I've got to sort all this stuff out in days. Is it possible to sort out all those things in your past that you'd prefer not to have done? ... But actually by going through the process we've gone through, I think we have. And it's a real blessing to have this time do that.
Recorded
Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian, interview at Gould's home in London, 20 September 2011
source ↗
Rupert Graves
English actor
I’d edit out all my gauche incomprehension.
Judy Murray
Scottish tennis coach
When I was 17, I was offered a tennis scholarship at the University of Virginia. I wish I had been brave enough to take it.
More from Toby Stephens
View profile →A review of Phèdre said – because I was quite large at the time – Toby Stephens’s Hippolytus needs to get on a StairMaster.
Ulysses – I’ve tried many times and never got through it.
I cry all the time. It’s embarrassing. I mostly cry when my children perform something at school. My wife regularly says, “Do you see any other fathers weeping?” But I can’t stop myself.
I was in a restaurant with my daughter in Los Angeles and I had an accident involving a stomach upset. That was mortifying for both of us.
Never ever think that things are going to turn out all right.
To be completely alone.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 219 answers
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 61 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Adam Clayton, Adam Kay, Adam Lambert, Adele Parks, Adrian Edmondson, Adrian Scarborough
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