All the times I was mean to someone.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
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’d have stuck with the original Dexys Midnight Runners look we started in 1978, which became known as the New Romantic look a couple of years later. Our management and record label talked us out of it. Later, Duran Duran and Spandau came out with that look and that made us look old-fashioned.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 203 →That Sparks predates the Beatles and it’s kind of all too obvious where they got a lot of their inspiration.
I would have been OK with feeling shy. In my teenage years, I thought being an actor meant that you had to be a little more performative.
Alison Steadman
British actress
I would never have smoked - I gave up years ago.
More from Kevin Rowland
View profile →On stage – the Old Vic in 1981 and Glastonbury last year.
The contentment I have now.
Gerry Adams, because he’s got incredible integrity and vision, and he’s had to put up with so much flak.
My brother Pete passing on in 2005.
Insanity. I am on a recovery programme – clean from drugs and drink for many years – and if I stopped doing all that stuff I’d go crazy pretty quick and pick up drugs again, because I was a real fucking addict.
My dad said, “You’re going nowhere.” I was seven or eight.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 366 answers
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 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
Mandy Patinkin, Michael Kiwanuka, Courtney Pine, Joan Jett, George Michael, Yusuf Islam
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