The question
Who alive today do you admire most, and what draws you to them?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's Q&A repeatedly uses this prompt, sometimes dropping 'living' while retaining the same comparative judgment.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Michelle Obama. Her girls were massive fans of So You Think You Can Dance and we were invited to the White House for the Easter egg hunt. She was even more brilliant than you imagine, and we bonded over a love of Beyoncé.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 May 2021 source ↗
Bryan Stevenson.
An Italian neuroscientist called Rita Levi-Montalcini. She is now over 100. Under Mussolini she was forbidden from practising medicine because of the race laws. So she set up a lab in her basement, and the work she did there laid the foundations for her winning the Nobel prize.
Greg Norman, for the way he handles winning and losing.
Ed Sheeran, a little ginger boy from the farmlands in Suffolk who ran away to London, slept on the streets and became the biggest musician in the world.
Horse riding in a steep canyon in Los Angeles. A couple of paparazzi had hidden under camouflage blankets and when a horse sees a lens, he thinks it’s the eye of a predator. My horse flipped out. When he landed, I ended up on his neck; that was pretty close.
Art. I recently bought a Sean Scully painting, I have a Damien Hirst, a Tracey Emin, a Polly Morgan snake and a couple of Jonathan Yeos.
Heart explosion.
To anyone I have lost touch with. It happened purely by accident as life took over.
Ben Stiller, Max Whitlock, Joan Jett, Terry Gilliam, Brian Cox, James Bay
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