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.
My teenage years in the Runaways: I was still naive enough to think good things about the world and life and people, and I was having fun playing rock’n’roll around the world, living the dream.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 November 2020 source ↗
I'm nearly always happy.
In my second year at Oxford University. There was much lolling over the side of punts on the river with languid male companions plying me with cheap champagne.
When my children arrived.
Phoning my dad to tell him we’d won the Edinburgh Perrier award with The League Of Gentlemen in 1997.
Right after 9/11, Kenny and I went to perform for the troops in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. As we were flying in, an electronic voice went off: “Warning: missile launch! Warning: missile launch!” The Taliban had fired a rocket at us. I was waiting to see the back of the plane blow up, but it didn’t and we landed.
My buddy Kenny Laguna. He’s a person of extraordinary character, he’s intelligent, and a very good friend.
That my baseball team, Baltimore Orioles, is always in the basement.
I don’t think I’d change anything: the bad forms you more than the good.
I had a cafeteria job, serving food, and some people were really nasty. There was a stack of nice, cool plates, and a stack of hotter plates that had just come out of the kitchen. So, if a person was an arsehole, I’d hand them a hot plate with a smile and watch them deal with it.
My electric car: it’s a hybrid Cadillac.
Gloria Estefan, Kelis Rogers, Imelda Staunton, Marianne Faithfull, Shaznay Lewis, Doris Day
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