Pete Rozelle
Commissioner of the National Football League, 1960–1989
No, I wanted to be sports editor of the Los Angeles Times. That was my goal.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
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
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
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.
When I was about 14 and got my first drum kit, I wanted to be a drummer in a band like the Police.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 October 2018 source ↗
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Katherine Parkinson
English actor
An astronaut. I still do.
A visual artist.
Adrian Edmondson
English actor, comedian, musician and writer
I only ever wanted to be an actor or a rock star. I was suspended from school in the sixth form and allowed back only when I promised to join the army. But I lied.
More from Rick Astley
View profile →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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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