A headmaster said I was a complete washout and I would never be any good for anything.
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
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.
Someone once said online that they hated me so much they wanted to stab me with a spoon. A knife’s easy, but a spoon – that takes real hatred.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 July 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
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Bruno Tonioli
Italian choreographer
Growing up as a gay boy in a small town, you get used to people saying bad things pretty quickly.
“Didn’t you used to be Graydon Carter?”
In school, I was 11, and we had to paint a picture of family life. My painting was held up to the class and I was told it looked like a spider with ink on its feet had walked across the page. It was done so viciously – humiliating.
More from Jason Manford
View profile →Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It doesn’t seem anyone has a bad word to say about him. They should let him be president – of the world. We had a brief Twitter chat, and I printed the tweets out and put them on my office wall.
Being able to buy my parents a house.
That I go to the gym a couple of times a week, yet I am unfit and overweight.
Wasting my life.
When I finished the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I bought a replica of the car. It’s in my front garden, surrounded by a lovely wildflower meadow, and people stop to look at it.
That there are more important things than being right.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 366 answers
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 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
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Adam Lambert, Fran Healy, David Hasselhoff, Belinda Carlisle, Bryn Terfel, Kevin Rowland
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