First, I wanted to be a historian, then a drummer, and after that I just wanted to be employed. And I still do.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
What I am now, but with a better singing voice.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 May 2019 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 191 →A teacher and a nightclub singer.
Ivan Lendl
Czech and American tennis player
I always wanted to play tennis. Otherwise, I always thought it would be fun to do something in mathematics or physics.
John Prescott
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007
A trade union official.
More from Steve Pemberton
View profile →Phoning my dad to tell him we’d won the Edinburgh Perrier award with The League Of Gentlemen in 1997.
Nothing – haven’t you heard of the butterfly effect? I could find myself still collecting glasses in Charnock Richard while Donald Sutherland would be enjoying my life.
Tears Of Laughter by Cheese and Crackers. We wrote it for an episode of Inside No 9 and it ends “Laughter is my memory of you...”
Collecting glasses in a Lancashire pub. Try to take a pint glass with a millimetre of foam still in it, and you get a lit cigarette on the back of your hand.
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