Bintou Keita: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

The question

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

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.

Bintou Keita

UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General; head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work.

Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

Others on this question

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Jo Nesbø Norwegian writer and musician

I wanted to play for Tottenham.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 April 2026 source ↗

Alexa Chung English television presenter

To be blonde. It was just my ambition in life. Just to be blonde.

Recorded Laura Brown, harper by Harper's BAZAAR, Harper's Bazaar, 9 February 2015 source ↗

Tom Kerridge Chef and restaurateur

No, not at all. I grew up on an estate in Gloucester, with no real sense of what I wanted to do, but I was never afraid of hard work or getting stuck in. School didn't always suit me, but when I found myself in a kitchen at 18, washing up, everything clicked. It was the energy of the space, the pace and the teamwork that I fell in love with.

Recorded Tripsmiths source ↗

Roger Allam English actor