The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
First loved, then laid, then paid.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 June 2025 source ↗
When I was about 14 and got my first drum kit, I wanted to be a drummer in a band like the Police.
A stuntman. Evel Knievel was an icon.
A DJ. I still do.
An artist travelling and playing with the Stones.
Appearing on US breakfast radio. I heard the DJ say that after the news we would hear from the author Lincoln Child. I had to choose between making a guy with a mixed-up PR release look like an idiot or pretending to be Lincoln. I pretended.
“Try this, you’ll love it.”
A painting by Renoir, paid for by demanding a huge fee for a screenwriting deal with a producer I didn’t want to work for. The movie was never made.
Nothing. If I’m worried or upset or tormented, I go to sleep quickly and easily, to find welcome oblivion.
The exact median middle-aged black woman in the US. If hard work guaranteed success, she’d be the most successful person on the planet. But she isn’t, yet she keeps on going.
Always saying yes to people. For example, I’m doing this.
Ralph Ineson, Gloria Estefan, Katherine Parkinson, Felicity Jones, Shaun Ryder, Nish Kumar
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