The question
What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?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.
“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.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 November 2024 source ↗
Any time I’ve been racially profiled. The words might be different, but the feeling is the same.
That I wouldn’t be successful. Joke’s on them, I guess.
I’ve heard it all: too fat, too short, no talent. Those are the things that cut me deep when I was younger, but now they drive me.
I love you but I hate your lifestyle.
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.
One horrible afternoon in Chicago when I forgot my words in The Marriage of Figaro, in a role I’d sung hundreds of times.
Full of passion and laughter.
Thinking that singing makes me fit.
I’ve been a strong advocate that all my five children should be great swimmers, so you can deduce what my fear is.
Absolutely nothing.
Kevin Rowland, Michael Ball, Chaka Khan, Olly Alexander, Bruce Dickinson, Richard Coles
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