Meera Syal
British writer and actress
Having to clean out my daughter’s digs at university. The memory of the state of that toilet still lives with me.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
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.
I cleaned the toilets at the local pub every Saturday morning.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 November 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 229 →
David Harewood
British actor and presenter
I was a bailiff for half a morning. I couldn’t stand it.
Rose Tremain
English writer
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.
Jodie Whittaker
English actress
Working in a soap factory in Huddersfield. I was in my late teens, so I was basically hungover every day.
More from Bryn Terfel
View profile →One horrible afternoon in Chicago when I forgot my words in The Marriage of Figaro, in a role I’d sung hundreds of times.
“You’re a wonderful musician but a terrible friend.” It was Daniel Barenboim, the famous conductor, because I didn’t have time in the calendar to work with him.
That moment in Bilbao in 2020, when I tried to cross the street and did a pirouette and suffered a dreadful break in my right leg, which means now I have 10 screws and a band in it.
In 2006, I went fishing for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way back, one of the engines caught fire and then we had one engine for 70 miles. Slowly but surely, we got to Baton Rouge in the darkness but then got very close to a very large passing ship – they didn’t see us and we didn’t see them.
Thinking that singing makes me fit.
Full of passion and laughter.
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