Nicholas Parsons
English actor, straight man and presenter
If there was a miracle pill that helped you to feel physically the same as you are mentally.
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
An unhackable, simple-to-remember password that works for everything.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 November 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 206 →
Michael Stipe
American singer
A sustainable future for all. I could finally stop worrying.
Mary Berry
English food writer and television presenter
Being better at the computer. Then I could be more self-sufficient.
Joseph Fiennes
English actor
A single-malt whisky.
More from Jack Dee
View profile →When I was a kid I had a Saturday job in the stockroom of a supermarket. I remember everything in there being a little bit grubby and slightly sticky. We’d do things like play rugby with a swiss roll. I think of it every time I go shopping.
When something is half price in a supermarket, always find out why.
Audiobooks have allowed me to catch up on the books I always claimed to have read anyway. On long journeys I’ll often be listening to Kafka, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn. It’s a fantastic way to pass time and often means I’ll turn up at the gig really depressed. So it’s a win-win.
Probably a train ticket anywhere in the UK.
I can go for weeks without opening the mail. I can look at a letter that has just dropped through the letterbox, wonder what it is and then just shred it.
Caring, patient, considerate, innumerate.
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