Jon Sopel: Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?

Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Jon Sopel said elsewhere, not written here

Impatience and vanity.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Hugh Jackman

When I “poll the audience” and my need to please others.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, November 2022 source ↗

Ed Harris American actor and director

Asking my wife questions that don't need to be asked.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 August 2007 source ↗

Ben Okri

Worrying at things.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 July 2026 source ↗

Barack Obama 44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008

Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing.

Recorded Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia, The White House (Obama administration archive), 19 May 2013 source ↗

More from Jon Sopel

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Question What is your greatest fear? Identity & self

Failure, being caught out, making an idiot of myself.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 source ↗

Question How close have you come to death? Death & what remains

I’ve had motorcycle accidents – I had one where I ended up in intensive care. But if you are on a frontline – which I have been – and people start shooting at you – which they have done – you put yourself in quite considerable danger. So: on a moving frontline in northern Afghanistan in 2001.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2024 source ↗