The question
What disappointment has stayed with you longest?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I suspect it hasn’t happened yet.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 30 August 2025 source ↗
Carrie and Aidan not ending up together.
Feeling as though I had to leave Radio 2 to get my life back on track. I had every intention of being David Jacobs or Brian Matthew and going on until I was 127, but it didn’t turn out like that.
The way some of the music industry is being run now. Music is being treated as one big karaoke machine.
The Guardian’s review of my book.
They tend to say it behind my back.
A great education.
That there is time. I doggedly prioritise and pursue tasks, and the day seems to open out and everything does get done. Chill.
Anything by Dostoevsky. I tried!
I don’t want to get into an early death spiral, when you’re scaling down your life unnecessarily because you’ve already been there or done that. I never want to stop adventuring.
Insular, creative and mechanically minded.
Zoë Heller, Michelle Dockery, Shane MacGowan, Kelsey Grammer, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Barack Obama
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