An English teacher said, “You’ll never make anything of yourself.”
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What would you like to leave your children?
Death & what remains
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
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.
The music journalist Paul Morley described me as bland.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 November 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 122 →
Maggie O'Farrell
Irish-British novelist
“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.
I don’t think you could print it, it’s so bad.
Racial and homophobic slurs – the F- and N-words. When I moved to London, people screamed the F-word from their cars, and that stings.
More from Mariella Frostrup
View profile →A foreign correspondent.
A sense of the world being full of possibility and it being in their hands to make it a better one.
Both my grandmother and my mother got dementia. My grandmother has passed away. My mother is in a home. Dementia is my biggest fear because it robs you of the very thing that makes life special.
A few zeros on my bank balance.
I worked in a chicken factory in the Netherlands when I was 16.
I’ve had a few hairy scrapes as a scuba diver.
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Also answered this
Rose Ayling-Ellis, Zack Polanski, Toby Stephens, Graydon Carter, Belinda Carlisle, Munroe Bergdorf
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