Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's long-running Q&A repeatedly asks this standing question, with minor tense variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 May 2026 source ↗
In my first job in film, a giant bloke dressed like a sumo wrestler asked me to get his G-string out of his arse. He said he couldn’t reach it.
Cockroach stamper at a dried-flower factory.
I didn’t enjoy a bar job and glass collecting – people could be really rude.
On a cosmetics production line. I walked out after half a day.
It’s usually a slight feeling that, having got through the day, I didn’t get any time to do any writing or something creative – it was a lot of admin, exhaustion from that and rumination.
A running accident when I was 14 or 15. I fainted but I was a bit of a jester and they thought I was taking the piss, so I was left for a bit. I woke up in hospital.
You reach a certain point in life and suddenly know a lot of dead people, and I’ve noticed you don’t stop getting to know people who are dead. Those relationships continue and I like that.
To be stuck in the past.
I’ve not always been great friend material. I’ve tried to get better at that, so to be remembered as reliable by a few would be great.
Steady, reaching, bewildered.
Ben Okri, Victoria Derbyshire, Adrian Dunbar, Melanie Blatt, Mo Farah, David Vélez
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