Julian Clary
English actor, comedian, novelist and presenter
My cold indifference towards discarded friends.
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I’m embarrassed when I get people’s names wrong.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 January 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 243 →Catastrophising.
Absentmindedness.
Cybill Shepherd
American actress and former model
Acting like the good little girl.
More from Roger McGough
View profile →Losing track (see above).
I had dreams of becoming the first scouse pope. Unfortunately, the girls got to me first.
A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”
That it will go on quite happily without me.
I’m irritated by critics and academics who dismiss poetry that is popular, comprehensible or humorous.
A picnic on the beach at Seaforth during the war. Somehow I managed to wriggle through a barbed-wire fence and run across a minefield. My teenage aunt Kat bravely followed suit and rescued me.
More on identity & self
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Robert De Niro, Eugene Levy, Paapa Essiedu, Judy Blume, Indira Varma, Craig Charles
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