The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The summer of 1997. My husband, who is an American, gave up everything to come and live with me in Edinburgh when we were students, and we were so skint but we had so much fun.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 April 2023 source ↗
In the sea, somewhere hot. Looking back at people I love on the beach.
As a child playing in my parents’ garden in Birmingham, which they still have, and where my daughters play, swinging on my swing that my dad made for me.
The day my son was born.
Phoning my dad to tell him we’d won the Edinburgh Perrier award with The League Of Gentlemen in 1997.
People who can’t hear other points of view. Absolute certainty always scares me a little.
At a fashion show after-party in New York in 2004, my friend dared me to push her into the pool. I did, and you’ve never heard laughter die so quickly.
My creative freedom. I was the creative director of a large fashion brand when I packed it all in to pursue my writing.
When I was about 18, I worked on the chicken counter in a large supermarket, and every morning I had to pierce 64 birds on to industrial skewers to load up the rotisserie. That was very grim.
To my younger self. I was incredibly self-loathing and self-doubting, and I’m still undoing that damage 30 years later.
My mother and my brother would still be alive. So much of my life has been coping with the grief of losing them.
Christian Louboutin, Rick Stein, Heston Blumenthal, Paul Smith, Keith McNally, Terence Conran
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