The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?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.
In the first lockdown. Obviously, there was terrible grief and sadness and fear around, but there was also this reclaiming for nature. I was constantly at my allotment with the big kids and my husband.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 July 2022 source ↗
I couldn't answer that. There are so many amazing things – falling in love, winning an Oscar, moving my mom out to America and just having a simple dinner with great friends.
When I am performing, and when my kids make musical mayhem.
Before kids, when I was 13 or so, on the back of my horse, running at full speed in an open pasture. Post kids, happiness happens often, but in more subtle ways. I now prefer the word “content”.
At the altar all seven times.
Procrastination.
When I was 18, I bought a boat for a million pounds and sold it a year later for just over half the price.
The outcome of the Leveson inquiry.
Trusting some men.
It was a double-edged sword, but being a major-label artist, I felt like a commodity, a thing to be sold.
A shimmering bioluminescence that lights up each cell.
Harry Enfield, Paterson Joseph, Keeley Hawes, Sofia Coppola, Hayley Mills, Paapa Essiedu
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