The question
What is the worst job you have ever had?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 kitchen porter at some big telecom office in Wimbledon. I was also a kitchen porter at L’Escargot and, while I was there, a model for Gilbert and George. It was a quick £15 and they were terribly nice.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 September 2018 source ↗
After Emmerdale, babysitting. I freaked out – I couldn’t believe people put me in charge of their children.
Working in a warehouse, packing frozen meat. It was a nightmare: I hate the cold and it was very tough.
I worked in the largest pork pie factory in Europe. I had a plastic mushroom-shaped thing and had to tamp down the meat into the pie base. It was a conveyor belt of pies from nine to five. The worst thing was the crackly AM radio, which was played loudly through the tinny tannoy system. I still can’t listen to I’m Not In Love by 10cc without thinking of raw minced pork.
When I started as a researcher in the BBC, I was working for an editor who was a self-confessed misogynist. He used to practise shooting by aiming his air gun at an aerosol can balanced just over my head. I made it a matter of pride not to flinch as the pellets whizzed by.
I often cry when people do things well, like on Britain’s Got Talent; I cried at the old ladies doing finger knitting.
Abseiling down a cliff for Doc Martin in a suit, carrying a medical bag.
On childhood family holidays in Mallorca, with my mum, dad and sister, Amanda.
A bespoke wagonette I had made in Germany; I drive a pair of Clydesdale horses called Ronnie and Bruce.What do you most dislike about your appearance? The lot.
Charles Dance, Jodie Whittaker, Charlotte Church, Peter Capaldi, Tom Ellis, Lupita Nyong'o
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