Toyah Willcox: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

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.

Recorded Toyah Willcox said elsewhere, not written here

A man. I have always fought against being gender specific. I just don’t like being identified as female: I’m a person.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 April 2019 source ↗

Others on this question

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Ian Rankin Scottish crime writer

In my teens, an accountant. In my 20s, either a rock star or a novelist.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 October 2020 source ↗

Philippa Dunne

An actor. I watched a lot of TV because we lived in the countryside and the weather was so bad.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 June 2026 source ↗

Björn Ulvaeus Swedish musician

Successful like my two uncles, who were paper industry magnates.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 June 2020 source ↗

Alan Shepard Naval aviator and astronaut; the first American in space and the fifth person to walk on the Moon

No, I didn’t. Certainly when I was in the one-room country school you described, I guess my ambition at that point was to get through with a creditable performance. Really, of course, nobody thought about astronauts in those days, but I didn’t really even start thinking about airplanes very much when I was in grade school. So that interest sort of came later on.

Recorded Houston, Texas, Academy of Achievement, 1 February 1991 source ↗