The question
If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I would be less naive.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 September 2025 source ↗
I was a very lazy child, but I think I’ve made up for it by being a workaholic. I might push some of the work back to my childhood.
Getting my tongue pierced aged 15, when I had train-track braces on both my top and bottom teeth. Huge error.
Nothing. Everything’s got me to this point and I had to learn lots of things. Maybe I just wouldn’t have been so terrified all the time and I would have got up a bit earlier – I missed quite a few mornings.
I wouldn’t have tried to break up a fight when I was 17.
I’m a bit of a hoarder.
Trusting someone and being let down.
It was reading out loud, but no longer. (I am dyslexic.) I was encouraged by my husband to do a speech for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, which helped me gain my confidence, and the fear disappeared.
Clearing up someone’s sick – it was on police duty.
The children. As a mother you are constantly worrying whether you’ve done the right thing.
Honest, empathetic, daring.
Harry Redknapp, Armistead Maupin, Jennifer Hudson, Judy Murray, Richard Coles, Bianca Jagger
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