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.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 April 2026 source ↗
Someone once said online that they hated me so much they wanted to stab me with a spoon. A knife’s easy, but a spoon – that takes real hatred.
“We’d love you to be on the cover of our magazine and we’ll give you a makeover.”
I’ll never amount to anything. Who? He was my rival at dance school. It hurt and is something that I’ve always had in the back of my head to defy.
A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”
I couldn’t care less.
I called Elizabeth McGovern Elizabeth Montgomery throughout a show. But, bless her, she didn’t say anything.
I was stabbed in my 20s. It was a late-night mugging and, while taking my wallet, they stabbed me in my chest.
Back in the day, when comedy was crueller, my monologues were full of terrible jokes about people, and you can’t apologise because then you’re asking people to forgive you. Your punishment is to walk around knowing you said these horrible things.
Now that I’m at this end of my career, I’m gobsmacked that I’ve managed to cling on for as long as I have.
Our wedding weekend in Ireland.
Robert Carlyle, Niamh Cusack, Richard Coles, Paapa Essiedu, Craig Charles, Indira Varma
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