At the time, it was the fact that my first marriage didn't work, but subsequently that proved to be a good thing.
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 September 2009 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 366 →The death of my mother, when I was 18.
After I got arrested, my dad, a lawyer, took me to a QC to try to build a case against the FBI. The dejection on his face when it became obvious that we couldn’t was disappointing.
That my first play, Red Velvet, took so many years to be done. It took me seven years to write and then five years to get to the stage.
More from Michael Palin
View profile →Flying in over London on a cool, clean morning after a long time away.
More on failure & regret
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 69 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
Also answered this
Adrian Scarborough, Zoë Wanamaker, Bob Hoskins, Rob Lowe, Rory Kinnear, Rob Brydon
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All failure & regret questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject