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 ↗
When I was a 26-year-old news correspondent, the head of BBC news gathering, Chris Cramer, refused to let me take up a six-month attachment on the foreign affairs programme Correspondent. He said: “I think it’s too soon; you could do it later.” He’d never have said that to a man.
An angina attack 300 metres below the summit ridge of Everest in 2005, having spent 72 days getting that far.
I spent my life searching for family. I travelled around the world to look each one of them in the eye. Unfortunately, but understandably, for most of them, I am their biggest disappointment.
Relapsing. I usually spend eight, nine, 10 months sober, then I’ll spend a day relapsing and I get disappointed. But it never lasts too long. I get back up and try again.
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!
They tend to say it behind my back.
Insular, creative and mechanically minded.
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.
A great education.
Don Warrington, Paul Giamatti, Reece Shearsmith, David Gandy, Rob Brydon, Hilary Swank
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