Dishonesty and insincerity.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Other people’s decorating, if I feel they’ve missed an opportunity and just decorated in that wet-cardboard, modern-grey thing. That’s a life not properly lived.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 October 2022 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 202 →I don’t like false or opportunistic people.
Lying. Let’s not call it “untruthful.” Or “factually inaccurate.” I don’t even call it bullshit, because I like bulls. And bulls need to shit. So you can’t hold that against them. Let’s call it what it is: lying.
Cruelty, and also general rudeness and unkindness. I’ve always told my children: Don’t ever find entertainment in someone else’s discomfort.
More from Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
View profile →This is going to horribly upset my wife, my children and my grandchildren, but it was when I did The Greatest Snowman last year for Channel 4. Being let loose on an Austrian mountainside to build snow sculptures was my happy point, and who knew I’d find an icy G-spot at nearly 58.
I was nearly hit by an enormous gold-fibreglass cherub in a shopping centre. It fell five storeys and smashed into a thousand pieces about 4ft away from me.
My wife. I am a lavish present-giver. I love worshipping my wife with beautiful bits and pieces – it is one of my greatest pleasures.
I am crucified by my modesty: it’s terrible.
The missus. She is the glamour mamma mia at the top of our feudal pyramid. We all live together, so she’s a full-time grandmother and rules the roost. How she steered us through lockdown was extraordinary.
More on values & belief
- Which living person do you most admire, and why? 410 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 82 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 33 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 21 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 16 answers
- What important truth do very few people agree with you on? 15 answers
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