Peter Capaldi
Actor and director
Death is always close.
How close have you come to death?
Question
If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing?
Death & what remains
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
We used to have one of those gat guns that shot pellets. My friend pretty much had the thing at point-blank range to my temple. It popped out and completed its trajectory about a millimetre from my head.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 January 2009 source ↗
Others on this question
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Cory Taylor
Novelist and screenwriter
How many times I could have died before now, and in how many different ways. And yet I came close only once: a speeding sedan ran a red light, hit three other vehicles, and jack-knifed into my rear wheel split second after I’d stepped out of my parked car. A bystander described the scene to me later. “You were a millimetre away from losing your legs,” he said.
Andi Oliver
British cook, television and radio broadcaster, singer
I broke both my legs in a hit-and run accident when I was 26.
When interviewing Idi Amin of Uganda in 1975, he shouted: “We have ways of dealing with people like you.”
More from Mike Skinner
View profile →I would obviously be in a good place chemically, the synapses would be content. I would play with my kids. I don’t think I would have time to watch anything by Ingmar Bergman. Bergman would suddenly feel like not that good a director if I only had a few hours.
Infinite money might allow me to achieve unbounded creativity.
I cry all the time.
My brother was singing Yellow Submarine on stage with his class. I was singing along with them, showing off cos I knew all the words. The song ended suddenly and I was the only one in the whole hall who sang, 'We ...'
Bill Drummond, Thomas Bangalter and Jay-Z.
Realising that success wasn't going to keep me happy all my life.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 214 answers
- What song would you like played at your funeral? 178 answers
- If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing? 54 answers
- What happens when we die? 51 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 44 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
Mark Radcliffe, Kim Wilde, Clara Amfo, Esther Freud, Noel Clarke, Lemn Sissay
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