I behaved badly with two old lovers. Years later, when I took one to lunch to apologise, it made it worse.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 March 2017 source ↗
The question
Who deserves an apology from you, and for what?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 209 →
Ian Rankin
Scottish crime writer
There wasn’t a lot of bullying at my school, but there was a fair amount of ragging – and I knew which side I wanted to be on. I’d say sorry to anyone who felt picked on.
My husband, Ludo, for not really getting why war movies are fun to watch.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy
British journalist
Every offended interviewee who thought I was asking hard questions for some personal reason. It’s never personal.
My housemate, because I keep shrinking his jumpers in the wash.
More from Gloria Steinem
View profile →Seeing the future die, from Bobby Kennedy to dear friends.
Dying just a millisecond before I was about to say something I really wanted the people I love to hear.
I would love to have a good memory. I’m at an age when remembering something right away is as good as an orgasm.
Dr Denis Mukwege, because he is to sexualised violence against females what Mandela was to apartheid.
I haven’t done it yet.
In my 30s, I was staring at a pair of expensive boots in a shop window when the photographer Gordon Parks came up behind me. He instantly understood, because he grew up even poorer than me; he made me buy them on my credit card.
More on failure & regret
- What disappointment has stayed with you longest? 367 answers
- If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change? 203 answers
- What is the harshest thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- When were you most embarrassed? 122 answers
- How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 35 answers
Also answered this
Louis Theroux, Jon Snow, Caroline Lucas, John Prescott, Anita Rani, Samira Ahmed
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All failure & regret questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject