Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 November 2025 source ↗
Saying something dumb on Twitter and getting yelled at by thousands of strangers. Also, catastrophic climate change.
Figuratively doing nothing.
Being onstage and forgetting why I’m there.
The greatest fear I can remember is coming back from WW II and being amazed that I was more afraid to audition for a job than I was flying 52 missions.
High self-esteem.
I had some gynaecological issues that were very sudden, about 18 months ago, and felt that I might be dying. I wasn’t but it was quite serious.
I’d have gone solo sooner.
I am consistently disappointed in the music industry. Every time someone says that I’m underrated, that feels extremely disappointing because I’ve done my end of the bargain.
At a pub in Rotherham. I was a really bad waitress and I ended up being demoted to chopping the potatoes and I even got fired from that.
On stage at the Brixton Academy on the third night of the residency I did there. I walked out and could not stop crying, some sort of mad relief that it’s all paid off and it’s all been worth it.
Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, Fay Ripley, Omid Djalili, Angela Griffin, Alan Cumming
Search the directory for somebody in particular.