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I am who I am because of that messed-up childhood.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 July 2021 source ↗
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.
Others on this question
View all 203 →I would become fitter younger. Because I would have been hotter younger!
The loss of Conrad.
Ronnie O'Sullivan
English snooker player
I would go back to when I was 14 and keep to my own style of playing snooker. I was perfect, but I didn’t think I was, so I started playing like everybody else and created bad habits. With a little more time, I could have been the ultimate player. I look at my career and I probably got 75% out of it instead of 100%.
Joan Jett
American singer, songwriter and guitarist
I don’t think I’d change anything: the bad forms you more than the good.
More from Anita Rani
View profile →The day I passed my driving test, at 17.
As the billionaire philanthropist Anita Rani, who helped bring education to huge numbers of young women around the world.
Climbing Scafell Pike in the Lake District when I was about 15. The winds were about 85mph, my legs lifted and I nearly flew off. Thankfully somebody grabbed me.
Hard work, painful.
My dog was quite expensive. She’s a Bedlington whippet, named Rafi after Mohammed Rafi, the famous Indian singer. She’s got a boy’s name, but she doesn’t mind.
Guilt for not being productive enough – ridiculous.
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