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.
I was a happy kid. I had quite a small life: I grew up in Walthamstow and didn’t really leave east London. I didn’t go to the South Bank for the first time until I was 18 years old.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2023 source ↗
Sunday mornings with my parents when I visited from college.
Lost in a piece of music.
French kissing on Tower Bridge under a full moon in the wee small hours.
Can't quantify – I am often happy.
After losing my mum still managing to finish drama school, because that was really difficult. I lost her in the first year.
A really bad habit of eating sweets before I go to sleep.
I would really love to know my parents as an adult. I lost my dad when I was 14 and my mum when I was 20.
I find it difficult to sit still.
In 2016, the moment my agent rang me to tell me I’d got the part of Hamlet for the RSC. While I was on the phone, I looked to my left and turned to the right, and a bus whizzed by and the wing mirror was so close to me that it knocked my hat off.
In order to raise money to pay for myself to go to the National Youth Theatre, I performed a medley of my drama school speeches and some songs for my entire school. Considering I can’t sing, this was terrible. I did U Remind Me by Usher and Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T’s. They paid £2 each – basically, to laugh at me.
Chris O'Dowd, Kylie Minogue, Sarah Parish, Shirley MacLaine, Una Stubbs, Jessica Raine
Search the directory for somebody in particular.