I used to clean the ovens in a bakery. Brillo pad and poison.
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 March 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 229 →I was a Harrods store detective for a day. I was so bad at it, one of the other detectives thought I looked suspicious and reported me.
Scraping plates in a fish and chip cafe in Whitby.
Magician’s assistant on a cruise ship for two weeks when I was 19. When I was meant to be being levitated, I was silently crying while pretending to be unconscious as I hung limply off a metal pole. It was bleak.
More from Johannes Radebe
View profile →I would like to believe that you reunite with the people you love the most.
When my UK citizenship was approved. It’s taken me eight years and lots and lots of money. I was at home in South Africa when I received the news and my mum said, “I am so happy for you because this is your glitterball.”
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.
My father because I was 12 when he passed and I blamed him for everything in my parents’ marriage. Now I realise he did the best he could and was just figuring life out like everybody else.
My default will always be to go for the worst-case scenario and that is something that I am unlearning.
Building my mum her dream home.
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 192 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 67 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 66 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 63 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 46 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 41 answers
Also answered this
Esther Rantzen, Kate Humble, Romola Garai, Jon Sopel, Jack Davenport, Laura Kenny
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject