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 ↗
Picking my nose.
I have a habit of sabotaging the moment in pursuit of perfection.
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.
I don’t deplore anything about myself, but I am a perfectionist.
Losing track (see above).
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.
I’m irritated by critics and academics who dismiss poetry that is popular, comprehensible or humorous.
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.
A lady came up to me in Tesco last year and said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Roger McGough?”
Barack Obama, Michael Cunningham, Luise Rainer, PP Arnold, Tina Turner, Jon Snow
Search the directory for somebody in particular.