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.
Scottish singer and songwriter; lead vocalist of Garbage
A ballerina. I remain rather disappointed that I became a rock star instead.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 May 2022 source ↗
A spy, a witch and a nun.
When I was about 14 and got my first drum kit, I wanted to be a drummer in a band like the Police.
J-Lo, a foreign correspondent and, at uni, I assumed that someone would tap me on the shoulder and ask me to be in MI6, but it never happened.
A stuntman. Evel Knievel was an icon.
Dying of the same awful disease that took my mother – a particularly aggressive form of dementia called Pick’s disease.
It was such a beautiful summer’s night and I had pink hair and my band was doing really well and my mum was there, my mum was still alive. It was very magical for me and to get the honour of my city, to be blessed by their respect, it was delicious.
My dog’s trust in me.
Greta Thunberg, a brightly coloured little bird in a coalmine, desperately sounding the alarm for others while laying her childhood to waste.
Myself. I have never been harder on anyone else.
Climate change. That is the single most important calamity in the making that I obsess over.
Sue Perkins, Martin Kemp, Charlotte Church, Björn Ulvaeus, Shaun Ryder, Emma Bunton
Search the directory for somebody in particular.