Prepared, focused, a bit silly.
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What happens when we die?
Death & what remains
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
What scares you about getting older?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this exact standing prompt.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Steady, reaching, bewildered.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 May 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 111 →Impatient, ambitious and happy.
Curious, thoughtful and kind.
Hopeful, egalitarian, overweight.
More from Tom Burke
View profile →A movie. Does it have a name? It might do.
Putting chocolate mousse in my agent’s face. Somebody had done it to me – that thing where they go, “Smell this, it smells funny”, and then they put it in your nose. A year later I was in this French restaurant with a very 1980s-style dessert trolley and, before I knew it, I had a bowl of chocolate mousse in front of me. And my agent went, “What’s that smell?”, and it felt impossible not to … I immediately felt awful and tried to apologise. He, of course, said that he found it funny. But I knew he didn’t.
You reach a certain point in life and suddenly know a lot of dead people, and I’ve noticed you don’t stop getting to know people who are dead. Those relationships continue and I like that.
I’ve not always been great friend material. I’ve tried to get better at that, so to be remembered as reliable by a few would be great.
It’s usually a slight feeling that, having got through the day, I didn’t get any time to do any writing or something creative – it was a lot of admin, exhaustion from that and rumination.
Having regrets and not knowing what to do about them.
More on identity & self
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Ben Okri, Alex Hassell, Dervla Kirwan, Clare Bailey Mosley, Tony Christie, Sarah Perry
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