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.
“You’re selfish.” It was a friend.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 April 2025 source ↗
A reviewer once called me “artistically bankrupt”, and it doesn’t feel like reviews can get much worse than that.
“You sing like a goat.” When I did my French album [Voila], this French woman – a supposed friend – said to my face: “It’s fantastic but, how come you sound like a chèvre?” It was like someone had hit me in the stomach.
It’s that bad, I’d never repeat it. I’ll just say it was particularly cruel and incredibly racist. It was somebody that I used to date, at the end of the relationship, and it hurt very deeply.
This was said about me in a Radio 1 focus group: “I don’t pay my licence fee to hear scummy northerners.”
Redemption. People can be redeemed, goals can be redeemed.
A bushel of self-confidence.
Telling a story to my son about my brother.
I worry about doing everything right with my kids.
Losing the people that I love.
Holding a large and fragile glass object in a very dangerous environment.
Charles Dance, Erin O'Connor, Alex Lawther, Rosalind Eleazar, Nick Frost, Imogen Poots
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