The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I wanted to be a footballer and then a squash player – I was in with a chance because I was very good. But I fell out of love with that by 14 or 15 and joined a youth theatre.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 January 2019 source ↗
A sailor. I wanted to be in the Royal Navy like my grandad.
A writer. Always.
A saint. Then a ballerina.
A writer, I’m sorry to say. Boring, I know, but true.
Thinking about all the worst possible things: losing people, dying, how am I going to die? All that sort of stuff. I stay awake thinking about furniture and shoes as well. It’s not all death.
I say it a lot to my kids when I’ve lost my temper, and I’ll save up a big one for when they are 18.
“I don’t love you.”
It’s hard to beat David Attenborough. Everything he does is quality. I like people who make me proud to be British.
I love clothes and accoutrements, so it would be either a suit or a watch. I love Mark Powell in Soho, and Paul Smith.
The Wimpy in Kingston when I was 16. I’d recently become vegetarian, and there weren’t many veggie burgers in 1988.
Melissa McCarthy, Julia Ormond, Rose McGowan, Joss Stone, Shirley Ballas, Paul O'Grady
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