To be here in this one moment.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Never ever think that things are going to turn out all right.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 June 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 137 →
Gino D'Acampo
Italian-British celebrity chef and media personality
Minimum effort, maximum satisfaction. That’s the way everyone should live.
That there is time. I doggedly prioritise and pursue tasks, and the day seems to open out and everything does get done. Chill.
Know the things you are responsible for and the things you aren’t.
More from Toby Stephens
View profile →There was a very large part of my 20s where I was an alcoholic, and an addict. When I lost my dad to cirrhosis, I knew that the only difference between us was that, tragically, he couldn’t stop whereas I could.
I was in a restaurant with my daughter in Los Angeles and I had an accident involving a stomach upset. That was mortifying for both of us.
Ulysses – I’ve tried many times and never got through it.
I cry all the time. It’s embarrassing. I mostly cry when my children perform something at school. My wife regularly says, “Do you see any other fathers weeping?” But I can’t stop myself.
A review of Phèdre said – because I was quite large at the time – Toby Stephens’s Hippolytus needs to get on a StairMaster.
To be completely alone.
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Also answered this
Michael Flatley, Terry Pratchett, Bear Grylls, Ed Harris, Ram Dass, Meghann Fahy
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