Benjamin Zephaniah: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

The question

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Benjamin Zephaniah

British poet and author

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I hated writing and I hated reading.

DG Readers and Benjamin Zephaniah, The Guardian, 14 October 2014 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 256 →

Melissa McCarthy American actress

I wanted to make women’s clothing. I also said that I wanted to be an artist; I don’t think I ever said I wanted to be an actress, but I remember thinking that would be fun.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 January 2019 source ↗

Jason Donovan

I haven’t grown up.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 January 2024 source ↗

Ahmed Zewail Chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1999

But I had decided that science is really the thing…It is what I wanted. Exactly.

Recorded Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015 source ↗

Albie Sachs Anti-apartheid lawyer; Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

I’d say, “I’m going to be a doctor.” I don’t know why I changed. I know my dad had something to do with it.

Recorded Interview, Cape Town, South Africa, American Academy of Achievement, 3 July 2009 source ↗