My kids navigating the world as it is today – and daddy longlegs.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I can’t say it.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 July 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →
Fran Lebowitz
American author and public speaker
Rodents – including the tiniest mouse.
People finding out my greatest fear.
Losing a loved one.
More from Andrew O’Hagan
View profile →Most days, I wanted to be Albrecht in the classical ballet Giselle, dancing until I dropped dead.
The internet. Such potential for good and for levelling up the world, but such a quagmire in reality.
My first holy communion, where my trousers were too big for me and fell down, a circumstance which earned me both the instant contempt of the girls and the heightened interest of the priests. That’s just how it was in 1975.
Just. Hanging. On.
Somebody once told me I was the spitting image of David Cameron.
Making people smaller than they are because of something they can’t handle in themselves.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Penny Lancaster, Paul Merson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rosie Jones, Christine Baranski, Helen Skelton
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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