Sandy Powell
British costume designer
When I rode on the back of a motorbike from London to Rome with my eyes closed the entire way.
How close have you come to death?
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Last year, driving in California, I found myself on the wrong side of the road. I was 30 seconds away from hitting two cars coming the other way.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 May 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
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Christopher Hitchens
Essayist, critic and journalist
I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement. I could faintly hear myself breathe but could not manage to inflate my lungs. My heart was beating either much too much or much too little. Any movement, however slight, required forethought and planning.
Shappi Khorsandi
Iranian-born British comedian
I’m convinced heartache almost killed me a few years ago.
Lesley Sharp
British actress
I got run over when I was three. I ran across a road in Manchester and was hit by a car. I only had concussion, but I could have died.
More from Aidan Gillen
View profile →The floral waistcoat and shocking-pink shirt combo I wore on my 21st.
A stuntman. Evel Knievel was an icon.
Teachers at my school, for being such a smartarse.
I won a local art competition aged 10 – the first time I’d won anything.
Pyramid Song, by Radiohead, live.
Cleaning around the feet of John Malkovich with industrial carpet cleaner while he was trying to learn lines in the foyer of a theatre.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 216 answers
- What song would you like played at your funeral? 178 answers
- If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing? 54 answers
- What happens when we die? 51 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 46 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
Joseph Fiennes, Helen George, Emily Mortimer, Rita Wilson, Joanne Froggatt, Meera Syal
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