Clare Balding: What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?

The question

What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?

Originally asked

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

Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.

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

Clare Balding

English broadcaster, journalist, TV presenter and author

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

This may sound nauseating, but I am a very happy person. I love my work, I love my life and I'm told by those who know/love me that it's a bit like living with Tigger. Bloody annoying, I should think.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 15 January 2011 source ↗

Others on this question

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Adeel Akhtar British actor

At boarding school, I was unable to get the main part in Hamlet, so I put on a production of The Homecoming with my friends. The teachers came to see it and said they didn’t know I had it in me. It felt very good.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 May 2018 source ↗

Ranulph Fiennes English explorer

In 1982, having travelled for three years to do the first journey around the earth on its polar axis. Charles Burton and I were trying to get from the north pole down to our ship on the edge of the Arctic Sea. We had to float for three months on a diminishing ice floe. Eventually we had to leave the floe and try to get to the ship in canoes with skis under them. In the maze of broken ice we saw its masts on the horizon. That second was probably my happiest moment.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 31 May 2008 source ↗

Kelly Macdonald Scottish actress