HD
I am probably happiest now, but I have been happy at every stage of my life.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 February 2011 source ↗
The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 577 →Playing the Cowardly Lion in our fourth-grade production of The Wizard of Oz. Thank you, Mr. Riccobono.
Cerys Matthews
Welsh singer-songwriter
Now, by far. Old enough to know time’s short, young enough to use it.
Now. My life is better with every year of living it.
I was happiest in every aspect of my life in the 1990s, when I was married to Paddy [King, a management consultant] and we had the two children and my mum lived with us, and Countdown was the biggest show on Channel 4.
More from Hugh Dennis
View profile →At the time, it was the fact that my first marriage didn't work, but subsequently that proved to be a good thing.
More on time & hindsight
- What lesson has mattered most in your life? 138 answers
- What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore? 78 answers
- What worries you about getting older? 61 answers
- What counsel has proved most valuable to you? 28 answers
- If you could put a message on a giant billboard, what would it say and why? 25 answers
- What line from a parent, teacher, or mentor do you still repeat to yourself? 23 answers
Also answered this
Hayley Mills, Jessica Raine, Jennifer Hudson, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Julie Walters, Madhur Jaffrey
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All time & hindsight questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject