To lose the ability to do my work.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
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
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
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.
Losing track (see above).
The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 January 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →Incapacitation.
Being lost and no one wanting to find me.
That we won’t act fast enough to save the planet.
More from Roger McGough
View profile →A picnic on the beach at Seaforth during the war. Somehow I managed to wriggle through a barbed-wire fence and run across a minefield. My teenage aunt Kat bravely followed suit and rescued me.
I had dreams of becoming the first scouse pope. Unfortunately, the girls got to me first.
I’m irritated by critics and academics who dismiss poetry that is popular, comprehensible or humorous.
A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”
Last Sunday when all the family came round to celebrate my 88th birthday. (Or was it Saturday. Or the week before, perhaps?)
I’m embarrassed when I get people’s names wrong.
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? 196 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? 112 answers
- What are you most proud of? 104 answers
Also answered this
Robert Carlyle, Robert De Niro, Eugene Levy, Andrea Bocelli, Judy Blume, Sharleen Spiteri
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