Julian Clary
English actor, comedian, novelist and presenter
My cold indifference towards discarded friends.
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Question
What problem are you still trying to solve?
Craft & work
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What inspires you to learn?
Attention & the world
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
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.
My tendency to skip meals.
Vanity Fair, Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 6 December 2019 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 257 →I’m terribly impatient.
Lack of confidence masquerading as perfectionism.
Maxi-multitasking.
More from John Lewis
View profile →There are many battles. There’s so much that needs to be done. We need to protect the environment. Save this little planet. Not just this little piece of real estate we call America, but save the planet.
On the Freedom Rides in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a state trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die.
I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.
Recorded
Julian Bond, Explorations in Black Leadership interview, Explorations in Black Leadership, University of Virginia
source ↗
Barack Obama, because he believed he could be president of the United States, and he succeeded. He was kind, and he tried to set a high standard of leadership.
As a participant in the movement, as I was sitting in, I came to that point where I lost all sense of fear.
When I was growing up on a farm in rural Alabama, I fell in love with raising chickens. They seem truly innocent. Whenever I'm around chickens, I feel happy.
More on identity & self
Also answered this
Bob Schieffer, Jon Snow, Barack Obama, Zack Polanski, George H. W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
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