I started stammering badly the first time I was on live radio, on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. When I think about it now it brings me out in a cold sweat.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗
The question
When were you most embarrassed?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim recurring question in The Guardian's Q&A series.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I started stammering badly the first time I was on live radio, on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. When I think about it now it brings me out in a cold sweat.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗
At the Mighty Hoopla festival, Kimberley and Nicola from Girls Aloud joined me on stage for a Girls Aloud song. I completely forgot the words.
My brother was singing Yellow Submarine on stage with his class. I was singing along with them, showing off cos I knew all the words. The song ended suddenly and I was the only one in the whole hall who sang, 'We ...'
A gazillion years ago I was in Gucci with Melanie Blatt, and I attempted to sit down on a chair that wasn’t there. I did a full-on stuntwoman backward roll, landed in a ball of the floor and laughed so hard I wet myself. Everybody in the shop moved to a different section.
See my greatest fear!
To keep going and never give up, and to enjoy it to the absolute full because, at any moment, the curtain can fall.
Interrupting or talking over people. As a stammerer, I am particularly alert to this.
Last summer, swimming in a waterfall in Cumbria with my daughters.
All my clothes are secondhand, but I did buy a pair of new silver Vivienne Westwood shoes to get married in, which I still have.
Last week, while I was wet-wrapping my child’s chronic eczema.
Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed George Floyd’s murder. It took astonishing courage to stand on the pavement in front of those policemen, and we all owe her so much.
Jane Asher, Jack Whitehall, Pauline McLynn, Kathy Lette, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Harlan Coben
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