Billy Ocean: If you could edit your past, what would you change?

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Billy Ocean said elsewhere, not written here

I would do a lot more investments.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 August 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →

Carlos Acosta Cuban ballet dancer

The time I told my father I hated him, causing him a lot of pain. He passed away six years ago, and my mother eight years ago.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 September 2018 source ↗

Zack Polanski

Nothing. Tony Benn, one of my favourite politicians, said, “I don’t care where you’ve been, I care where you’re going.”

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 December 2025 source ↗

Simone Biles United States artistic gymnast

Nothing. Everything has led me to who and where I am now.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 February 2017 source ↗

Cory Taylor Novelist and screenwriter

So many times I’ve wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs, or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later. If I’d just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying now. I’d be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death, all of the time, if only we knew it.

Recorded Edited extract from Dying: A Memoir, Text Publishing, The Guardian, 17 May 2016 source ↗