Michael Ball
English singer, presenter and actor
Watching Long Lost Family on telly.
What most recently made you cry?
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Listening to a song that my brother-in-law – the brother of Jason, my first husband – wrote, about how hard it was to live without his brother.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 September 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
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Joely Richardson
British actress
Two and a half weeks ago, when a loved one was going away. Separations never get any easier.
I cry all the time. Films can tip me over. Especially Pixar ones. I alarmed my kids when we went to see Coco – I was a mess. I cried at the Elton John gig at Glastonbury.
Rita Ora
British singer-songwriter
Getting an honorary ambassadorship from the president of Kosovo in July.
More from Corinne Bailey Rae
View profile →I remember being a teenager and writing this romantic short story in the style of the Brontës on a computer and I didn’t realise that the person whose computer it was could just print it out. A group of boys had a couple of pages and they were all reading it.
When my first husband died, because it felt like my life was over, and it was challenging to keep in life at the time.
My mum looks after our kids all the time, but on the very few weeks she takes time off, doing it all is a big juggle. My mum is a combination of Mary Poppins and Angela Davis, so I’d clone her.
I wouldn’t change anything. When I was 29, my first husband died, so I learned a new way of thinking about life, which is: there are many things that you can’t control.
All the big ones – climate change, safety for our children, money.
I’m not really ashamed, but I haven’t read Lord of the Rings.
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