If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Gino D'Acampo said elsewhere, not written here
I would have spent more time with my parents. I did see them often, but you don’t realise how much you’ll miss someone or something until it’s gone.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 December 2022 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →
Greg James British author, broadcaster, comedian, and presenter
If I had known what a stylist was when I joined Radio 1, I would have enlisted the help of one.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 March 2019 source ↗

Ian McEwan British novelist and screenwriter
To have grown up with my siblings. They were at least 10 years older than me.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 August 2018 source ↗

John Simpson English journalist
I would have behaved better to my first wife, and the girl I lived with afterwards. I was always away.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 December 2016 source ↗

I’d have reported the tutor who asked me to read an essay to him sitting on the toilet as he lay soaping himself in the bath.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 September 2025 source ↗

More from Gino D'Acampo

View profile →

More on failure & regret

Also answered this · A–Z

Adam Clayton, Adam Kay, Adam Lambert, Adele Parks, Adrian Edmondson, Adrian Scarborough

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer