My dad said, “You’re going nowhere.” I was seven or eight.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗
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.
My dad said, “You’re going nowhere.” I was seven or eight.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗
“Your cooking sucks” – before I learned to cook in Covid.
“You were amazing in Game of Thrones.” I say it’s the worst thing – it’s also the best!
Racial and homophobic slurs – the F- and N-words. When I moved to London, people screamed the F-word from their cars, and that stings.
“What is Seann Walsh and how do we make it die?” It was online, thankfully. It wasn’t in Sainsbury’s.
The contentment I have now.
Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – I think that’s true.
My brother Pete passing on in 2005.
Gerry Adams, because he’s got incredible integrity and vision, and he’s had to put up with so much flak.
I worked in the stores of Edgware hospital when I was about 17, and it was grey and depressing.
Insanity. I am on a recovery programme – clean from drugs and drink for many years – and if I stopped doing all that stuff I’d go crazy pretty quick and pick up drugs again, because I was a real fucking addict.
Bruce Dickinson, Olly Alexander, Richard Coles, Jason Manford, Rita Wilson, Melanie Blatt
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