On X, I am regularly called a traitor, a fraud, a grifter, a weakling, a narcissist, a coward and a child molester.
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
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.
A reviewer once called me “artistically bankrupt”, and it doesn’t feel like reviews can get much worse than that.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 June 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 124 →It happened when I was younger, somewhere outside London. We were on bikes, and this older girl pulled up and said something racist that I won’t repeat. I will never forget that, because it was the first time, and I was like, “Oh, I am feeling different from everyone around me right now”.
“You’ll never, ever work.” When you are young and full of hopes and dreams it’s devastating. I am just grateful that I thought: “Well, I’m going to try.”
Paapa Essiedu
British actor
Called me the N-word.
More from Adam Kay
View profile →People who barge into a lift instead of standing aside for anyone exiting should be dipped in kerosene and fired into the sun.
When my cold toes drain the heat from his warm ones, but he doesn’t mind at all and is happy for our tarsal temperatures to meet in the middle.
Self-destruction.
A comedy gig at an army barracks for thousands of angry, horny squaddies just back from six months in the desert. I was on straight after the stripper.
I could have done without being sexually assaulted, or having an eating disorder, or pushing myself to breaking point, but every chapter of my life brought me here.
I’ve never been upgraded on a plane.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 368 answers
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 205 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 124 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 74 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 38 answers
Also answered this
Richard Coles, Maggie O'Farrell, David Hare, Jack Whitehall, Omid Djalili, Andrew O’Hagan
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