identity

What is your greatest fear?

Originally asked

Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire

The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

One of 4 questions in The Proust Questionnaire here.

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On the record

Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Arts and letters 58 Politics and public life 6 Sport 1
Read by age Any age In their thirties 10 In their forties 13 In their fifties 16 In their sixties 12 Seventy and beyond 14
Keir Starmer
Failure. I hate losing, particularly at football and politics. I play five-a-side every week – middle of midfield, barking orders. Some people say it’s the taking part that counts. I am not in that camp. It’s the winning that counts.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2023 source ↗

Mariella Frostrup
Both my grandmother and my mother got dementia. My grandmother has passed away. My mother is in a home. Dementia is my biggest fear because it robs you of the very thing that makes life special.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 November 2023 source ↗

Katie Melua
When I see older generations struggling with technology, I am afraid of it moving so quickly that I can’t use it.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 November 2023 source ↗

Philippa Gregory
I am spooked by water underground, water in drains and water in machinery. I am very frightened of mill wheels.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 March 2024 source ↗

Sharleen Spiteri
When I was little, a couple of rapes took place in Glasgow. I remember my mum saying to walk in the middle of the pavement, and to this day I am very conscious of where I am.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 May 2024 source ↗

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