The question
What disappointment has stayed with you longest?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Losing the 1992 general election.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 September 2025 source ↗
That after I collected countless signatures on a petition, the Queen's Guard still wear bearskin hats.
Losing my independence.
When I lost a race for the United States Senate, I thought the world was going to end for me politically, and 18 years later I was elected President of the United States. The biggest disappointment was that I wasn't able to communicate properly to the American people — with the proper conviction and the proper ability — where the country really stood. The pessimists, the naysayers, the change-wanters overwhelmed me, and I wasn't good enough. I wasn't articulate enough to have the country understand that we weren't in a recession, that we were in a rather booming economy in the last half of my presidency. That was a personal shortcoming, a failure on my path.
Seeing Bob Dylan live.
A dog, though my husband would prefer a cat.
Getting elected as MP for the Rhondda in 2001 despite everyone saying I was too “exotic” or “flamboyant”, ie gay.
I’d have reported the tutor who asked me to read an essay to him sitting on the toilet as he lay soaping himself in the bath.
Mum, because I never really knew how to cope with her alcoholism.
Zelenskyy for holding out against Putin.
When I worked out I was gay and decided to leave the church at 29.
Sadiq Khan, Caroline Lucas, Clare Balding, Jesse Jackson, Robert Peston, George H. W. Bush
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