Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 June 2026 source ↗
I’ve never had a terrible job. I’ve been a cook, waitress, bookseller, teacher, freelance writer. I know what the bad jobs are and I haven’t done them.
Bedpan emptier in a hospital.
The failed attempt at a home perm on myself in the 80s. I wanted to look like Kelly McGillis in Top Gun.
When I was 15, I conned my way into an office job at a company that represented makers of breast implants. The manager had a wart on the end of her tongue that she’d push against her teeth, making a very specific sound.
My work. What shape will it take?
The boozing. I started on rum as a child.
Recently, as people began to understand what I am trying to do in my painting.
As a nice old man.
In 2001, when my eldest son died.
Needing order always.
Kevin Pietersen, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, Shobna Gulati, Daryl McCormack, Bradley Wiggins, Mark Radcliffe
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