I’m quite scared of bats. I’m just seeing rats with wings – no, thanks.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
A Reform government.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 December 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →To experience the utter powerlessness of locked-in syndrome.
That I’ll never work again.
Not having the people I love around me.
More from Zack Polanski
View profile →I get trolled on a daily basis so it probably involved my teeth, but that was until I learned to love my teeth.
Forest Green Rovers, my football team, getting relegated.
I would say something earnest like stopping the far right, but the truth is nothing keeps me awake at night.
I’m going to confess I haven’t finished The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg.
Last summer with my boyfriend Richie. We had no plans – it was just wonderful.
Catching Covid. I don’t think any of us know what we’re messing with still to this day.
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Jon Sopel, Ed Koch, Rory Stewart, Rachel Maddow, Chris Bryant, Mike Wallace
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