Frank Cottrell-Boyce
British screenwriter, novelist and actor
The unguiltiest pleasure.
What does love feel like?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this exact standing prompt.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Like coming home.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 April 2022 source ↗
Others on this question
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Rachel Whiteread
English artist
A warm, frayed, soft blanket.
Gloria Estefan
Cuban-American singer and songwriter
Comforting, solid, unconditional, a drug.
Being present where you are.
More from Rose Tremain
View profile →When I first met Richard, in 1992, on a British Council writers’ tour of Adelaide. We were drinking Australian lager while parakeets squawked rudely in the neighbourhood gumtrees.
Meryl Streep. For all her truthful and perfected offerings that have taken me to an “elsewhere”, in which my mind could feel both soothed and stimulated.
Talking in cliches. We have the most economic, resonant and versatile language in the world, yet so many people use it in a dull and boring way.
A cream suit from Chanel that cost almost as much as a small car.
We live in a fearful age: Brexit, Covid, global warming, cancel culture, war in Ukraine. Add in pancreatic cancer and you find me in an advanced and complex state of anxiety.
Working as the assistant to an agony aunt on a women’s magazine. When we didn’t get enough heartbreaking letters, we made them up.
More on relationships
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Jia Tolentino, Sandi Toksvig, Adam Kay, Mary McCartney, Cressida Cowell, Viv Albertine
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