A review of Phèdre said – because I was quite large at the time – Toby Stephens’s Hippolytus needs to get on a StairMaster.
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
When I was a child, a member of staff at Wood End Assessment Centre [a former children’s home in Wigan] bellowed: “He copies them poems off of Bob Marley records.”
The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 October 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
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David Hasselhoff
American actor, singer, and television personality
"You can't see your children for two weeks." (When I was going through my divorce.)
People give me a hard time about my hats. Over Christmas, this drunk woman shouted something about me having a shit hat because I had a red beanie on. Last week at a party, someone gave me a hard time for wearing a cap. I just think about melting ice caps when this happens.
Someone once saw me in a play and said that I was disgusting.
More from Lemn Sissay
View profile →Life is not worth living if there is no one you would die for.
I would build relationships. I would remember people’s significant moments. I would not fear closeness.
Believing in, even admiring, people who refuse to believe in me, and not believing people who do.
That I can’t write.
The Prince and Princess of Wales for not knowing when to leave their home.
Also my most triumphant: 2017 at the Royal Court. Julie Hesmondhalgh reads my psychologist’s report over two hours. Every excruciating intimate word of it. Extreme verbatim theatre. One night only.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 366 answers
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 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? 69 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
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Maggie O'Farrell, John Waters, Seann Walsh, Sarah Hadland, Leona Lewis, Zack Polanski
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