The question
If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Nothing – haven’t you heard of the butterfly effect? I could find myself still collecting glasses in Charnock Richard while Donald Sutherland would be enjoying my life.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 May 2019 source ↗
I wasted a year doing nothing at 18. I got with a guy and just wanted to hang out. It didn’t do me any favours.
I would do a lot more investments.
The peace of the Sabbath, of a stopped world, a time outside time, was palpable, infused everything, and I found myself drenched with a wistfulness, something akin to nostalgia, wondering what if: What if A and B and C had been different? What sort of person might I have been? What sort of a life might I have lived?
I sometimes wish I had had the courage to be a politician – but I made the decision to be a human rights defender instead. I realised I cannot be both at the same time, because they may be incompatible.
What I am now, but with a better singing voice.
Phoning my dad to tell him we’d won the Edinburgh Perrier award with The League Of Gentlemen in 1997.
Collecting glasses in a Lancashire pub. Try to take a pint glass with a millimetre of foam still in it, and you get a lit cigarette on the back of your hand.
Tears Of Laughter by Cheese and Crackers. We wrote it for an episode of Inside No 9 and it ends “Laughter is my memory of you...”
Julia Stiles, Jack Whitehall, David Jason, Samuel West, Sofie Gråbøl, Burt Reynolds
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