I can’t bear people who lie.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Talking in cliches. We have the most economic, resonant and versatile language in the world, yet so many people use it in a dull and boring way.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 197 →Trolling, meanness and male violence.
I don’t like false or opportunistic people.
Adam Kay
British comedy writer, author, youtuber, comedian and former physician
People who barge into a lift instead of standing aside for anyone exiting should be dipped in kerosene and fired into the sun.
More from Rose Tremain
View profile →Meryl Streep. For all her truthful and perfected offerings that have taken me to an “elsewhere”, in which my mind could feel both soothed and stimulated.
When I first met Richard, in 1992, on a British Council writers’ tour of Adelaide. We were drinking Australian lager while parakeets squawked rudely in the neighbourhood gumtrees.
A cream suit from Chanel that cost almost as much as a small car.
We live in a fearful age: Brexit, Covid, global warming, cancel culture, war in Ukraine. Add in pancreatic cancer and you find me in an advanced and complex state of anxiety.
Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.
The only drink I really, really like is champagne.
More on values & belief
- Which living person do you most admire, and why? 406 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 79 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 30 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 14 answers
- What is the most overrated virtue? 10 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 9 answers
Also answered this
Jack Whitehall, Lolita Chakrabarti, Adam Kay, Kazuo Ishiguro, Maggie O'Farrell, Jane Asher
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All values & belief questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject