I was recently made to feel that it’s my mental health that’s the problem and not the system.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 November 2025 source ↗
The question
What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I was recently made to feel that it’s my mental health that’s the problem and not the system.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 November 2025 source ↗
I like you but I wish you looked more like David Beckham.
I love you but I hate your lifestyle.
On X, I am regularly called a traitor, a fraud, a grifter, a weakling, a narcissist, a coward and a child molester.
“You’ll never, ever work.” When you are young and full of hopes and dreams it’s devastating. I am just grateful that I thought: “Well, I’m going to try.”
I never finished The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir.
I’d like all my effort noticed.
High self-esteem.
I’d have gone solo sooner.
Five to 10, when I was just playing out and I didn’t realise I was a girl. Before my boobs came in, basically.
I am consistently disappointed in the music industry. Every time someone says that I’m underrated, that feels extremely disappointing because I’ve done my end of the bargain.
Melanie Blatt, Ben Okri, Midge Ure, Lucy Beaumont, Graham Norton, Penny Lancaster
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