Inefficiency. Whiners.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
People not remembering who I am.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 May 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 197 →
Kathy Lette
Australian-British author
People who pretend to have perfect marriages. Perfect marriages are like orgasms – many of them are faked.
Carelessness of truth and others.
Alice Waters
Chef, restaurateur and food activist
A lack of generosity. It can take so many forms—it doesn’t just have to do with money—so I’m always shocked when people can’t muster any at all.
More from Russell Mael
View profile →Watching all of Fellini’s movies one summer.
Signing away the rights to my life story to a major motion-picture company for a sum that I have since been told was way below the market rate.
Watching Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
That Sparks predates the Beatles and it’s kind of all too obvious where they got a lot of their inspiration.
Is that the final mix?
Shucking oysters one summer in Nice.
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