Kevin Rowland: 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.

Recorded Kevin Rowland said elsewhere, not written here

Insanity. I am on a recovery programme – clean from drugs and drink for many years – and if I stopped doing all that stuff I’d go crazy pretty quick and pick up drugs again, because I was a real fucking addict.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

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James Taylor

Still nuclear annihilation.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, May 2015 source ↗

Seth Meyers American comedian and TV host

Running out of ideas.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, January 2015 source ↗

John Grisham American writer and lawyer

Having a stroke.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, October 2017 source ↗

Alison Steadman British actress

That we will drown in plastic waste.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 January 2009 source ↗

More from Kevin Rowland

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Question What is the worst job you have done? Craft & work

I worked in the stores of Edgware hospital when I was about 17, and it was grey and depressing.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗

Question Which living person do you most admire, and why? Values & belief

Gerry Adams, because he’s got incredible integrity and vision, and he’s had to put up with so much flak.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗

Question If you could edit your past, what would you change? Failure & regret

I’d have stuck with the original Dexys Midnight Runners look we started in 1978, which became known as the New Romantic look a couple of years later. Our management and record label talked us out of it. Later, Duran Duran and Spandau came out with that look and that made us look old-fashioned.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗