I was trying to put a sexy element into punk because that’s one thing that was missing from it.
Mikael Wood, Los Angeles Times, 21 April 2026 source ↗
The question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
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David Hare
Playwright and screenwriter
I don’t think I am either as ruthlessly selfish as I was then, but I think that unhappiness made me terribly terribly selfish.
Impatience and vanity.
I’m quite stubborn.
Robert De Niro
Actor
I’m certainly not going to tell it here.
More from Billy Idol
View profile →I have no real qualms with this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class, except, damn, Billy Idol should have made it.
I was trying to put a sexy element into punk because that’s one thing that was missing from it.
Yeah, well, he died of too much of all the right things.
I’m the sexy sexagenarian. Then I’m gonna be the sexy septuagenarian, ha ha!
Ever since I saw The Beatles in 1962-63 I started to dream about being in a group. Being on stage, in a group, writing your own songs, it just seemed like they were having a ton amount of fun and there was this huge music explosion.
I nearly lost my leg and things like that, my life and my leg, you know? So (laughter) yeah, so gradually through the '90s, early 2000s, I was gradually trying to get off drugs, really. That's what I was doing, you know? I'm glad I'm like this today because I wouldn't be here talking to you. I would be probably either dead, in prison or gone crazy.
More on identity & self
Also answered this
Courtney Pine, Julie Andrews, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bobby Womack, Father John Misty, Chaka Khan
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