Skip to content

The question

What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

MC
Michelle Collins
Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
A radio presenter said I had yellow teeth – to my face. When I was 45, a manager in LA said I was too old to work in Hollywood; and then she rang my agent and said, “Can you tell your client never to wear that perfume again because it made me feel sick.”

The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 April 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 122 →
I was thrown out of a club by bouncers when I walked into somebody and told them that I was registered blind. They said: “Don’t give a fuck – you don’t belong in here.” As a straight white man, it gives you a taste of what other people have to contend with.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 November 2025 source ↗
Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
There will always be so many who might say, “Ah, he’s a politician masquerading as an archbishop.” Politics is so all-pervasive, and in my theology, obviously, all of life belongs to God, and you don’t have compartments, this is your economic life, this is your political life, this is your religious life. Religion encompasses all of those. But yes, I wouldn’t myself have said I was setting out to be a political animal.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
There’s a tweet somewhere saying, “If you like Africa so much, why don’t you go back there.” It was because I dedicated one of my dances to my three mothers – Mother Africa, Mother Nature and my mother.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 September 2023 source ↗

More from Michelle Collins

View profile →

More on failure & regret

Also answered this

Liev Schreiber, Toby Stephens, Cybill Shepherd, Katie Melua, Siobhán McSweeney, Michelle Visage

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer