Cleaning toilets at McDonald’s when I was 16.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 July 2018 source ↗
The question
What is the worst job you have ever had?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.
Cleaning toilets at McDonald’s when I was 16.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 July 2018 source ↗
Acting, when you don’t want to do it or you disagree with everything, is almost like having sex with someone you don’t like. I had one experience like that on stage, in a terrible version of The Cherry Orchard. I put on a wig, dark-coloured contacts and just hoped no one would recognise me.
It was a double-edged sword, but being a major-label artist, I felt like a commodity, a thing to be sold.
It’s also one of the best jobs I’ve done, but two hours in, when everyone’s pissed and ignoring you, hosting the Brit awards can be a tough gig.
Washing up in the Ford factory canteen in Dagenham.
Ten years ago, I went to visit my dad in Australia. I walked to the edge of a cliff and looked over and tripped. I righted myself but my head was over the edge. No one saw it.
To be looked at.
I would be a bit nicer to myself.
I didn’t learn to be intimate with people until I was in my 20s, so I was a very bad friend in my teens. There was a girl I was best friends with at college; I always used to kiss the boys she liked. I’d like to apologise to her.
My A-level results - I got two Cs and an A. I had applied to do philosophy at Cambridge, and thought my life was over.
Nothing – I don’t like music. I want my funeral to be uncomfortably quiet.
Irvine Welsh, Greg James, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Siri Hustvedt, Rose Tremain, Viv Albertine
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