The question
Excluding property, what is the most expensive thing you have ever bought?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this standing prompt, with minor contractions and word-order variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
My children’s education.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 June 2025 source ↗
A wedding, in 2012.
A trip that was, like, $100k. It was a lot of money and I didn’t even go on it. It was to St Barts. I paid for me and my friends and a lot of stuff fell apart, and then it ended up with one of my friends just going with his girlfriend.
A mink coat in 1975 (it was the done thing then). It cost me £5,500.
A pair of Russell & Bromley boots with studs. I have had them for eight years and wear them all the time.
Canadians are trained to say sorry to almost everything and everyone.
My first week in New York in 1978, when I was about to start as a writer at Time. And my first week in the south of France after retiring from my job of 25 years as editor of Vanity Fair.
Intermittent laziness.
Getting into a tense argument with Russell Crowe during one of the Vanity Fair Oscar parties.
Content. Cheerful. Appreciative.
“Didn’t you used to be Graydon Carter?”
Sofia Coppola, Ben Okri, Michael Stipe, David Arquette, Tegan Quin, Nish Kumar
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