The question
If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Nothing at all.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 August 2026 source ↗
When I thought maybe I've just got a few weeks, I thought God this is what they mean by the reckoning. I've got to sort all this stuff out in days. Is it possible to sort out all those things in your past that you'd prefer not to have done? ... But actually by going through the process we've gone through, I think we have. And it's a real blessing to have this time do that.
I would build relationships. I would remember people’s significant moments. I would not fear closeness.
I would find a much better way of looking after my mum in her last three years of dementia. I did my best, but it was incredibly difficult to find the right kind of care unless you’ve got £3,000 a week to spend.
My education. Benedictine monks didn’t really prepare me for the life I have lived.
As a perfectly decent bloke.
Mucking out pigs on a farm when I was 15.
Every actor has the same fear – ie, you’re never going to work again.
The king – because he’s been through quite a bit and I think he’s come out the other side brilliantly.
That’s the 64-million-dollar question.
I cry all the time in front of the telly. I was doing Gogglebox with Julian Clary recently and I cried watching The Piano.
Adam Clayton, Sofie Gråbøl, Alison Steadman, Burt Reynolds, Rachel Whiteread, Adam Kay
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