Jon Sopel: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Jon Sopel said elsewhere, not written here

Professional footballer for Tottenham, or train driver.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Marc Almond English singer

A vet, but then I discovered you needed qualifications.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 November 2017 source ↗

Malcolm Gladwell Staff writer at The New Yorker; author of The Tipping Point and Outliers

I didn’t want to be anything because I don’t look ahead. Even as a kid I thought it was pointless.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 April 2021 source ↗

Jessica Raine British actress

I was fidgety and clueless for a long time.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 March 2019 source ↗

Edmund Hillary Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953

I really had no idea whatsoever. I feel that my life developed as I went along. I was never one of those people who, at an early age, had picked an objective and worked steadily towards it. All I knew was that I wanted to get involved in adventurous activity. I didn’t have any specific type of activity in mind, but I wanted to do things that were exciting and adventurous. I had a fairly diffused feeling as to what precisely it should be.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗