Meg Rosoff
American novelist
Reasons To Be Cheerful, by Ian Dury.
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing?
Death & what remains
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I’d like to go all melodramatic and have Vide cor Meum by Patrick Cassidy from Kingdom Of Heaven. It’s also in another Ridley Scott movie, Hannibal. It’s an operatic piece and absolutely amazing. Obviously Ridley Scott thinks so, too..
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 October 2018 source ↗
Others on this question
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Clara Amfo
Broadcaster
Run to the Sun by NERD. I’ve always loved that song. People always think that Pharrell [Williams] wrote it about a lover but it was about his grandmother, who passed away. My brother was a massive NERD fan – he got me into them and there’s something so pure and loving about that song. I want my funeral to be a joyous occasion, I want people to rave and to wear bright colours. But for the moment of reflection, I want that song.
Kevin Pietersen
English cricketer
We Weren’t Born To Follow by Bon Jovi.
Harriet Walter
English actress
I went to a funeral where they played Cheek To Cheek: Fred Astaire singing “Heaven. I’m in heaven… ” Everyone smiled. I’d like that.
More from Rick Astley
View profile →In the 1990s in New Jersey, being driven to a radio station early one morning. Our driver fell asleep and we were on the other side of a dual carriageway with cars coming at us. We all screamed and banged on the seat, and he woke up and pulled the car back across.
I haven’t really had a job. I used to work at my dad’s garden centre in my late teens, but it was just messing around.
Fame. The upside is not worth the downside – you can’t turn fame on and off, and have privacy.
I think I’d just like to be chilling out really, so it’s like real summer family holidays where the most important things to decide are what are you going to have for breakfast, what are you going to have for lunch, what beach are you going to, and what are you going to have for dinner.
My wife, because she manages me and sometimes there isn’t time for niceties and we have to talk in a language that isn’t very marriage-like.
When I was about 14 and got my first drum kit, I wanted to be a drummer in a band like the Police.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 214 answers
- How close have you come to death? 209 answers
- If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing? 54 answers
- What happens when we die? 51 answers
- How would you like to die? 43 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 42 answers
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