Frank Cottrell-Boyce
British screenwriter, novelist and actor
I spent an advent in my late teens throttling turkeys.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
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.
A 12-hour nightshift at a toy factory in Southend.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 June 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 230 →
Big Narstie
British entertainer
When I first got excluded from school at 15, my dad gave me experience as a roofer. That’s when I came to realise I’m scared of heights.
Sandi Toksvig
Danish and British broadcaster, comedian and writer
Working on an assembly line in a plastics factory.
Andy Serkis
English actor
Putting ball bearings into Mum roll-on deodorant bottles in a factory, one summer when I was 17.
More from Alison Moyet
View profile →My older sister, Jeanne. We fought when we were kids, but she is so entirely capable.
A television. I don’t care for things. When I moved, I downsized and threw away most of my possessions.
When I was doing my gold swimming badge. I had to get undressed in a swimming pool and had forgotten my gym kit, so the teacher gave me a kit two sizes too small. In the water, I got my arms up over my head to get the shirt off and they locked. I sank to the bottom of the pool and sat there until a girl jumped in and dragged me back up again.
When I heard John Noakes had died.
I have the invisibility of a middle-aged woman. I live in Brighton, and feel for the first time in my life that I belong. My kids are safe, my husband’s in a good place and we have a roof over our head: I can’t imagine needing more than that.
For a while I wanted to be a policewoman, but I didn’t have five O-levels.
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 192 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 67 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 66 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 63 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 46 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 41 answers
Also answered this
Emma Bunton, Bryn Terfel, Sue Perkins, Ricky Wilson, Björn Ulvaeus, Charlotte Church
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject