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.
The melanoma has returned in your lung.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 September 2025 source ↗
The second agent I had said: “The thing is, you look like something but then you open your mouth.” So I got myself a sketch show and left, and she lost out.
There are yards and yards and yards of abuse every day. I ignore the lot of it.
“Do you know what your problem is?” It was a dear friend of mine. They were referring to the fact that I’m impatient.
When I was a child, a member of staff at Wood End Assessment Centre [a former children’s home in Wigan] bellowed: “He copies them poems off of Bob Marley records.”
When I worked out I was gay and decided to leave the church at 29.
Losing the 1992 general election.
Getting elected as MP for the Rhondda in 2001 despite everyone saying I was too “exotic” or “flamboyant”, ie gay.
I’d have reported the tutor who asked me to read an essay to him sitting on the toilet as he lay soaping himself in the bath.
The Doctor in Doctor Who. I still do.
An earthquake in Peru forced me and a young man into the street, where he had to introduce me to his family at three in the morning.
Keir Starmer, Zack Polanski, Jon Snow, Desmond Tutu, Clive Myrie, Rory Stewart
Search the directory for somebody in particular.