My old French teacher Madame Hawksworth stopped me in Ikley car park and said, 'We never thought you'd amount to much.'
Michael Odell, This much I know, The Observer, 14 August 2004 source ↗
The question
What is the worst 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.
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Others on this question
View all 130 →I’ll never amount to anything. Who? He was my rival at dance school. It hurt and is something that I’ve always had in the back of my head to defy.
Alexa Chung
English television presenter
I was filming T4 at T in the Park one year, and one person kept shouting, "Popworld cunt" at me. That sucked.
A review of Phèdre said – because I was quite large at the time – Toby Stephens’s Hippolytus needs to get on a StairMaster.
They tend to say it behind my back.
More from Alan Titchmarsh
View profile →Eric Idle’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. That’s me, really.
I hope that it exists. I'm not sure I can fit everything in before then.
That I have lost both my parents.
Alan Bennett. He's enormously good company, very funny, generous with his time, frighteningly intelligent - and a Yorkshireman.
But I should have more confidence, it's ridiculous.
My marriage has not been a drudge. But in 29 years there are times where it's not all excitement, thunderbolts and shooting stars. You have to think, 'I like you and I rate you,' and you'll ride it out.
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