When I first got sober, in 1990.
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.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 April 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 577 →I have a penchant for happiness. I have experienced euphoria before a migraine, which may not count, but I have also felt immense happiness leaning back in a chair in sunlight, puttering in my garden, reading, dancing, immediately after giving birth and when writing.
When I was doing Knight Rider.
On my wedding day, 21 July 2018. Mark and I had been together for 17 years but, having got through breast cancer treatment, we decided we’d finally get married.
More from Douglas Stuart
View profile →People who can’t hear other points of view. Absolute certainty always scares me a little.
At a fashion show after-party in New York in 2004, my friend dared me to push her into the pool. I did, and you’ve never heard laughter die so quickly.
When I was about 18, I worked on the chicken counter in a large supermarket, and every morning I had to pierce 64 birds on to industrial skewers to load up the rotisserie. That was very grim.
My mother and my brother would still be alive. So much of my life has been coping with the grief of losing them.
To my younger self. I was incredibly self-loathing and self-doubting, and I’m still undoing that damage 30 years later.
My creative freedom. I was the creative director of a large fashion brand when I packed it all in to pursue my writing.
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