Paula Wilcox: What do you fear most? — FLAPSS

The question

What do you fear most?

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.

PW

Paula Wilcox

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

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

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Bruno Tonioli Italian choreographer

Sheer drops, like a precipice.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 April 2023 source ↗

Edward Enninful Ghanaian-born English editor and stylist

When I get to the restaurant and don’t see any hot sauce on the table.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 December 2022 source ↗

I don’t have a great fear of anything. I look at things with positive eyes.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 January 2024 source ↗

John Simm English musician and actor

Outliving my kids – and rats.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 March 2023 source ↗

More from Paula Wilcox

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Question What most recently moved you to tears? Identity & self

I cry a lot at films; my mother and I were champion criers at Meet Me in St Louis.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗

Question What one change would most improve the quality of your daily life? Daily life

A driver or a helicopter.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗

Question What worries you about getting older? Time & hindsight

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.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗

Question What trait do you most dislike in other people? Values & belief

Complaining about the weather, because there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗

Question What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you? Failure & regret

We’ve run out of champagne.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗

Question How would you sum yourself up in three words? Identity & self

Impatient, funny, worrier.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 June 2026 source ↗

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