Adjoa Andoh
English actress
Cleaning men’s toilets in the Swan hotel in the Cotswolds.
What is the worst job you have done?
Question
Which writers or artists most influenced your work?
Taste & recommendation
Question
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Values & belief
Question
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Daily life
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Pulping books.
Rosanna Greenstreet, The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 March 2009 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 239 →
Neil Gaiman
Author of fiction, comics and screenplays
The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.
Erin O'Connor
English model
Shooting hosiery on top of an iceberg and getting my backside stuck to it.
Malcolm Gladwell
Staff writer at The New Yorker; author of The Tipping Point and Outliers
I was a reporter for many years at the Washington Post. Although I loved every minute, I don’t think I was a very good reporter.
More from Alain de Botton
View profile →Norman Mailer, Geoff Dyer and Roland Barthes. I'm interested in writing that takes in the great questions. I'm curious as to whether you can be profound in the course of reporting the incidents of everyday life.
I want to persuade people that Culture, broadly defined (literature, philosophy, art, theatre, photography etc.) can be used as a guide to how to live. I believe in the practical application of Culture, Culture as self-help.
A few years ago, I started wearing this as a uniform of sorts. It has removed all my anxieties about clothing. I now know what I'll be wearing in both summer and winter.
Machismo.
"You can't write."
I'd take a course in bread-making and open a small bakery.
More on craft & work
- What do you consider your greatest achievement? 205 answers
- How does a new work begin for you? 85 answers
- What do you do when you feel creatively blocked or stuck? 80 answers
- How do you know when a piece of work is finished? 76 answers
- How much rewriting or revision do you do? 59 answers
- What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job? 56 answers
Also answered this
Margaret Atwood, Judith Kerr, Sandi Toksvig, Jack Whitehall, Adam Kay, Alan Cumming
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All craft & work questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject