The question
Which trait in yourself do you like least?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.
I’m embarrassed when I get people’s names wrong.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 January 2026 source ↗
Not following through on things.
My distractibility, diminishing memory, and capacity for sustained concentration. My English master once said I had the brain of a butterfly. I feel that 40 years later, I’ve evolved into Dory from Finding Nemo.
Bad timekeeping.
My bottomless pit of need. Soft erections. It was hard to keep it to just two.
I’m irritated by critics and academics who dismiss poetry that is popular, comprehensible or humorous.
Last Sunday when all the family came round to celebrate my 88th birthday. (Or was it Saturday. Or the week before, perhaps?)
Unimpeachable, nonpareil, self‑effacing.
A picnic on the beach at Seaforth during the war. Somehow I managed to wriggle through a barbed-wire fence and run across a minefield. My teenage aunt Kat bravely followed suit and rescued me.
I had dreams of becoming the first scouse pope. Unfortunately, the girls got to me first.
A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”
Ben Okri, Sofia Coppola, Alex Hassell, Adrian Dunbar, Helena Bonham Carter, John Lewis
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