“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗
The question
What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?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.
“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗
“You’re selfish.” It was a friend.
“Oh, he’s all about money.” I’ve never charged anyone in all the years I’ve been doing one-to-one work. That’s my gift to the world.
I was opening in a play in my 20s, and my agent came on opening night, brought flowers, took me out to dinner and then told me she was no longer going to be representing me.
A fellow artist called me a flaneur!
Last summer, swimming in a waterfall in Cumbria with my daughters.
Last week, while I was wet-wrapping my child’s chronic eczema.
Effervescence in the soul.
To keep going and never give up, and to enjoy it to the absolute full because, at any moment, the curtain can fall.
Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed George Floyd’s murder. It took astonishing courage to stand on the pavement in front of those policemen, and we all owe her so much.
How long have you got? I have written a memoir and the subtitle is Seventeen Brushes with Death.
Richard Coles, Adam Kay, Jack Whitehall, Omid Djalili, Andrew O’Hagan, Chiwetel Ejiofor
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