The internet. Such potential for good and for levelling up the world, but such a quagmire in reality.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
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
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
When I was a 26-year-old news correspondent, the head of BBC news gathering, Chris Cramer, refused to let me take up a six-month attachment on the foreign affairs programme Correspondent. He said: “I think it’s too soon; you could do it later.” He’d never have said that to a man.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 January 2022 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 219 →
Jim Kerr
Scottish singer and songwriter
I travelled all the way to the Arctic Circle to see the aurora borealis, then fell asleep and missed it.
Jason Manford
English comedian and singer
That I go to the gym a couple of times a week, yet I am unfit and overweight.
Liev Schreiber
American actor
I thought I’d be smarter by now.
More from Samira Ahmed
View profile →A 50-metre lido that was always empty when I went.
My maternal grandmother, who lived with us for many years. I was a moody teenager and sometimes impatient and rude. Yet she was the person I feel I’m most like. I really miss her.
Meeting Richard Ratcliffe outside the Foreign Office during his hunger strike to try to get action to free Nazanin. I’m moved by the loyalty and strength of that couple and their family.
On stage, interviewing one of my heroes, Paul McCartney, at the Royal Festival Hall last November.
More on failure & regret
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 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
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Barack Obama, Caroline Lucas, Chris Bryant, Edwina Currie, George H. W. Bush, Gloria Steinem
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