Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 January 2026 source ↗
On a caravan site on a farm in the Brecon Beacons when I was a kid. I have three sisters and every year we met family friends with kids the same age. We would go to the river and make rope swings and build dens. It was very Enid Blyton.
The first time Emilie and I kissed.
About twice a week I think I’m having the best day of my life. When was I happiest? Er, Tuesday.
When I was a child and a teenager, before I got discovered.
A picnic on the beach at Seaforth during the war. Somehow I managed to wriggle through a barbed-wire fence and run across a minefield. My teenage aunt Kat bravely followed suit and rescued me.
I’m irritated by critics and academics who dismiss poetry that is popular, comprehensible or humorous.
I had dreams of becoming the first scouse pope. Unfortunately, the girls got to me first.
That it will go on quite happily without me.
A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”
Unimpeachable, nonpareil, self‑effacing.
Robert Carlyle, Daniel Clowes, Niamh Cusack, Elisabeth Moss, Björk Guðmundsdóttir, Zoë Wanamaker
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