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.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 31 January 2026 source ↗
14. I always played music until then, just like piano lessons. Viola, violin and clarinet as a kid. But at 14 I started playing guitar and I was like, “this is it. This is what I want”. I am so thankful that I had this single mission from the age of 14 till 29. For 15 years of my life I wanted nothing but to be a great musician.
An astronaut, an archaeologist, an actor, and a musician.
Composer, pirate, scientist, philosopher.
A magazine editor like Diana Vreeland.
I did say sorry to my mum, for being the way I was when I was a teenager. You become a parent and go, “Oh my God, this is what they were doing.”
Outside my very close-knit group of friends, socially I’m terrible.
Enthusiastic, chaotic, bungling.
“What is Seann Walsh and how do we make it die?” It was online, thankfully. It wasn’t in Sainsbury’s.
At school, I got my head stuck in a balustrade on the stairs at lunchtime. I had pupils laughing at me, parents laughing at me, teachers laughing at me and eventually, at the end of the day, the fire brigade laughing at me.
Certainty. I also can’t stand it when someone calls you and then says, “Wait, I need to put my headphones in.”
Mario Molina, Patricia Hodge, Martin Kemp, Shinya Yamanaka, Charlotte Church, Fay Ripley
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