Terence Conran
British restaurateur and designer
Merging my company with BHS – it was a great mistake.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Realising that success wasn't going to keep me happy all my life.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 January 2009 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 366 →
Nicola Adams
British boxer
Losing in the 2012 world championships final.
Harry Redknapp
English football player and manager
That my mum and dad didn’t move to live by the sea, where we live, before they died.
Being absent from my son’s life when I’m at work.
More from Mike Skinner
View profile →We used to have one of those gat guns that shot pellets. My friend pretty much had the thing at point-blank range to my temple. It popped out and completed its trajectory about a millimetre from my head.
When I was a child and I got a new toy.
I cry all the time.
My brother was singing Yellow Submarine on stage with his class. I was singing along with them, showing off cos I knew all the words. The song ended suddenly and I was the only one in the whole hall who sang, 'We ...'
To my dad for not making it back to Birmingham to see him while I was in London doing The Streets.
Infinite money might allow me to achieve unbounded creativity.
More on failure & regret
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 63 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
Also answered this
Esther Freud, Lemn Sissay, Kevin Pietersen, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, Jacqui Smith, Keren Woodward
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All failure & regret questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject