Doing a compulsory standup routine in my first week of drama school.
How close have you come to death?
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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.
Swimming off the north Cornish coast eight years ago. I remember thinking, “Why did they teach you how to inflate your pyjamas in life-saving classes at school, when they could have just told you what to do in a riptide?”
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 January 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 209 →
Adeel Akhtar
British actor
I fell off a ladder, landed on my back, got up and was fine.
Louis Theroux
British and American journalist and author
I don’t think I’ve ever been close to death but I am a nervous flyer, especially during turbulence, so there have been many times where I’ve felt that I was.
Laurence Fox
English actor and activist
A motorbike crash. I broke my shoulder and ribs and was so scared I didn’t ride for two years.
More from Nicola Walker
View profile →Like you are standing with an army.
My father, because he’s never run away from anything.
Ten years ago I bought a painting. I lived with it for a year before realising I didn’t like it at all. So it’s on my wall, mocking me daily.
Funerals are for the people left behind, so I don’t mind.
To anyone I’ve worked with between 5.30am and 8.30am. I am not a morning person.
As I get older, I get happier.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 214 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? 44 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
John Malkovich, Brendan Gleeson, Felicity Jones, Laurence Fox, Rosanna Arquette, Olivia Williams
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All death & what remains questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject