Michael Kiwanuka
English singer-songwriter
Nothing. Everything happens for a reason.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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.
I would like to come out at 16 or 17, and not 21.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 October 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 205 →
Eddie Marsan
British actor
I wouldn't have been a bully and I'd have stood up to more bullies.
I’d swap out a few boyfriends.
Mo Gilligan
British comedian
I don’t think I would change anything because it might not have got me here.
More from Noah Harari
View profile →On a personal level, the friend who is a single mum raising two kids by herself during this Covid era. She is a real hero. If a historical personality, I choose Mikhail Gorbachev, who probably saved the world from world war three.
When my dog died a couple of years ago. We were in Greece on vacation and a friend was watching her at home, and she was bitten by a snake. We rushed home, but we were too late by a few hours.
When I was 16, at the beginning of the summer vacation, I worked in a factory that made industrial valves and I was a much worse industrial valve producer than historian.
I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.
That I still don’t understand life. When I was young, I thought at some point I would find somebody who does. I am 45, and there is a good chance that I’ll never meet somebody like that.
Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.
More on failure & regret
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- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 124 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 124 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 77 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 39 answers
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Bryn Terfel, George Michael, Harlan Coben, Katherine Parkinson, James Norton, Omid Djalili
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