Harry Redknapp
English football player and manager
I was probably too cheeky to chairmen over the years.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Failure & regret
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What made you decide to stop something you were known for, and how did you know it was time?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What are you still hoping to finish?
Death & what remains
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
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.
Not reading medicine.
Rob McGibbon, The Definite Article, Rob McGibbon, 27 August 2011 source ↗
Others on this question
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Gloria Steinem
Writer and feminist organiser
Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.
Adam Kay
British comedy writer, author, youtuber, comedian and former physician
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.
Yusuf Islam
British musician
The respelling of my name to Joseph.
More from David Hare
View profile →I wrote a play called Knuckle in 1974, which opened to hostile reviews during the three-day week.
Because I loved it when I was young.
I stopped directing movies in the late Eighties because I believed I couldn’t be a playwright and a filmmaker.
All good dramatists are scared of the audience.
I would like to write a play which doesn’t disappoint me 20 years later.
I took Nicole out to dinner for the first time on 19 October, 1991. After that, everything changed.
More on failure & regret
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- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 77 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 39 answers
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