I would build relationships. I would remember people’s significant moments. I would not fear closeness.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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 ↗
Others on this question
View all 203 →I would have partied a little bit harder in my 20s.
I would find a much better way of looking after my mum in her last three years of dementia. I did my best, but it was incredibly difficult to find the right kind of care unless you’ve got £3,000 a week to spend.
I would not leave my teenage children to follow an unworthy love. It lasted a month and scarred the family for ever.
More from Steve Pemberton
View profile →What I am now, but with a better singing voice.
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...”
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.
Phoning my dad to tell him we’d won the Edinburgh Perrier award with The League Of Gentlemen in 1997.
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