Leafleting for a window company when I was 12. I remember putting them through letterboxes thinking: I’m going to sell drugs, because this is rubbish.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Cleaning around the feet of John Malkovich with industrial carpet cleaner while he was trying to learn lines in the foyer of a theatre.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 May 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 229 →
Rita Wilson
American actress, singer, and producer
I was a ticket taker at the Universal Amphitheatre, an outdoor music venue. I saw everybody – Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, the Eagles, Elton. But, after that, we had to clean the women’s restrooms and that was horrible. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of vomiting, a lot of very messy bathrooms.
Kevin Pietersen
English cricketer
Nappies aren’t fun!
Working as a waitress in a cocktail bar in Shoreditch, London.
More from Aidan Gillen
View profile →Pyramid Song, by Radiohead, live.
Foxes making love: it’s a very unsettling sound.
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.
I won a local art competition aged 10 – the first time I’d won anything.
Teachers at my school, for being such a smartarse.
The floral waistcoat and shocking-pink shirt combo I wore on my 21st.
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 192 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 67 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 66 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 63 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 46 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 41 answers
Also answered this
Hayley Squires, Joseph Fiennes, Helen George, Rita Wilson, Joanne Froggatt, Meera Syal
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject