Complaining about the weather, because there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Talking in cliches. We have the most economic, resonant and versatile language in the world, yet so many people use it in a dull and boring way.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 196 →
John Malkovich
American actor
The susceptibility to ideology or tribalism.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, August 2013 source ↗
Rafael Nadal
Spanish professional tennis player, 2001–2024
Selfishness and no respect for the others.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, October 2010 source ↗
People who punch down.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, July 2025 source ↗
More from Rose Tremain
View profile →We live in a fearful age: Brexit, Covid, global warming, cancel culture, war in Ukraine. Add in pancreatic cancer and you find me in an advanced and complex state of anxiety.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
A cream suit from Chanel that cost almost as much as a small car.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Like coming home.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
When I first met Richard, in 1992, on a British Council writers’ tour of Adelaide. We were drinking Australian lager while parakeets squawked rudely in the neighbourhood gumtrees.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Meryl Streep. For all her truthful and perfected offerings that have taken me to an “elsewhere”, in which my mind could feel both soothed and stimulated.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
More on values & belief
- Which living person do you most admire, and why? 402 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 75 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 27 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 13 answers
- What is the most overrated virtue? 10 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 8 answers
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Adam Kay, Adrian Dunbar, Ai Weiwei, Alan Arkin, Alex Hassell, Alex Lawther
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