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 become fitter younger. Because I would have been hotter younger!
The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 August 2026 source ↗
I wouldn’t have done the naked centrefold in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1972.
Boarding school. It was horrible.
I would have stopped making records after They Don’t Know.
Some of the neuroses of my 20s. I knew I had a great talent, but I thought it was unmarketable because I felt ugly.
I’ve never read any Salman Rushdie.
Speaking negatively to myself.
A mix – safety to be yourself, acceptance, a feeling of peace and reliance, but also challenge, whether that’s intellectual or emotional.
Enthusiastic, resilient, empathetic.
A sushi chef in my kitchen.
When I concentrate, I put my thumb in my mouth. I once did it during a really important meeting when asked a question I didn’t know the answer to. When I left the meeting my friend said: “What did you put your thumb in your mouth for?” I didn’t know I’d done it.
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