Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
John Purcell, Ten Terrifying Questions, The Booktopian, 6 February 2012 source ↗
As a kid I used to fantasize about being Clayton Moore, the masked hero in The Lone Ranger. I’m much too old to play him now – I’d have to be the baddie who he kills – although I do have a horse as King Arthur, well someone clopping along behind me with a pair of coconuts.
The Doctor in Doctor Who. I still do.
A pop star: I loved music from a very young age.
I only ever wanted to be an actor or a rock star. I was suspended from school in the sixth form and allowed back only when I promised to join the army. But I lied.
Some dodgy liver function tests in 2004.
failure. I dream of chapters I haven't written and things that I forgot to say in books I wrote three or seven years ago.
I want to persuade people that Culture, broadly defined (literature, philosophy, art, theatre, photography etc.) can be used as a guide to how to live. I believe in the practical application of Culture, Culture as self-help.
Fear, anxiety, longing, love, art, beauty.
I’m prone to overexplaining things –- when my own understanding of them is shaky. The better I know something, the shorter my prose.
Machismo.
David Hare, Margaret Atwood, J.K. Rowling, Kate Mosse, Jack Whitehall, Shirley MacLaine
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