Yusuf Islam: If you could edit your past, what would you change?

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Yusuf Islam said elsewhere, not written here

The respelling of my name to Joseph.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 November 2014 source ↗

Others on this question

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Cory Taylor Novelist and screenwriter

So many times I’ve wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs, or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later. If I’d just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying now. I’d be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death, all of the time, if only we knew it.

Recorded Edited extract from Dying: A Memoir, Text Publishing, The Guardian, 17 May 2016 source ↗

Aidan Gillen Irish actor

The floral waistcoat and shocking-pink shirt combo I wore on my 21st.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 May 2017 source ↗

Russell Mael

That Sparks predates the Beatles and it’s kind of all too obvious where they got a lot of their inspiration.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 May 2025 source ↗

Bill Bryson American-British author

Nothing. It’s too risky. What if you eliminated a misjudged situation from your life and it turned out that one of your children wasn’t born, or you failed to meet your partner?

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 February 2016 source ↗