Lack of purpose.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
What scares you about getting older?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Being run over by a cyclist on a pavement or pedestrian crossing, because it’s nearly happened too frequently.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →Not having the people I love around me.
A plane that I’m on plunging into the sea. Aside from that, pigeons.
COVID-19 and how it’s affecting everyone. Also, I’m afraid of not knowing when I’ll be able to perform in front of people again and enjoy an audience.
More from Paula Wilcox
View profile →Anything, because I’m a worrier. Also, if I’m working on a really exciting project, I can be awake like an excited child looking forward to going on holiday.
Not to be able to do the things that you take for granted, like running up the tube steps or going somewhere under your own steam.
I’m very impatient – next question.
Complaining about the weather, because there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.
We’ve run out of champagne.
I cry a lot at films; my mother and I were champion criers at Meet Me in St Louis.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Rebecca Lucy Taylor, Daryl McCormack, David Byrne, Elton John, Nick Frost
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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