The moment my daughter was born in 1999, because it took me seven years to conceive.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 October 2020 source ↗
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 moment my daughter was born in 1999, because it took me seven years to conceive.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 October 2020 source ↗
In bed this Saturday.
When my daughter Ella was born.
Swimming in the North Sea at midnight, surrounded by phosphorescence.
Most recently, going to a 1D concert at Wembley with my nine-year-old daughter. Seeing her dream becoming real. The highlight was meeting a nice man in the elevator when it was over, who gave her Harry's autograph. Turned out to be his dad. To my daughter that was like meeting the archangel Gabriel.
Romantic love – what a con. (I do still believe in it.)
It’s like digging a field together: it’s hard work, not very glamorous, but you can stand back and think, “We did that.”
In my first job in film, a giant bloke dressed like a sumo wrestler asked me to get his G-string out of his arse. He said he couldn’t reach it.
I am going straight to cremation like David Bowie, so there would be no funeral.
I wish I’d told my mother that, in all the years I knew her, she was never once boring. We weren’t demonstrative, so that would have meant that I loved her.
I had no female role models growing up. I lived an incredibly sheltered life: there was no TV at home and we had no visitors. It wasn’t until rock and pop came into my life that I concocted myself as a role model.
Ian McEwan, Joshua Ferris, Gregg Wallace, John Cooper Clarke, Pauline McLynn, EL James
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