Skip to content

In their sixties

Late enough to be looking back, close enough to still be doing the work. Most of the advice-to-your-younger-self answers here were given by someone in this decade or the next.

43 people · 1,345 answers

As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Ann Dowd

American actress

Recorded · The Guardian · 2022

A surgeon. I studied pre-med in Holy Cross College for four years and then I went to acting school.
Richard Coles

British musician, writer, presenter and priest

Recorded · The Guardian · 2023

A great composer. I wrote to Benjamin Britten to tell him this and that he was my third favourite composer. For some reason he didn’t feel moved to reply.
Joan Jett

American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Recorded · The Guardian · 2020

An astronaut, an archaeologist, an actor, and a musician.
Viv Albertine

Australian-born British musician and writer

Recorded · The Guardian · 2020

I had no female role models growing up. I lived an incredibly sheltered life: there was no TV at home and we had no visitors.
All 43 from in their sixties → or everyone who answered it

What do you fear most?

Originally asked

Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire

The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995

Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2003

I don’t think it’s misused yet, people are afraid of it might be misused but on the other hand, there is also value in finding out about the relation between several particular…
Keir Starmer

Recorded · The Guardian · 2023

Failure. I hate losing, particularly at football and politics. I play five-a-side every week – middle of midfield, barking orders. Some people say it’s the taking part that counts.
Cory Taylor

Novelist and screenwriter

Recorded · The Guardian · 2016

He’s always been the family cook. He’s been feeding me since the day we met. Everything I know about Japanese food I know because of him.
All 45 from in their sixties → or everyone who answered it

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.

Craig Charles

English actor

Recorded · The Guardian · 2024

Cowardice. There are so many issues that I would like to express opinions about but I’m too scared to stick my head above the parapet because of the social media pile-on.
All 45 from in their sixties → or everyone who answered it

Everyone here · A–Z

Adam Clayton, Alison Steadman, Ally McCoist, Andrew Ridgeley, Arlene Phillips, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ben Okri, Bobbi Brown, Bruno Tonioli, Caroline Lucas, Charles Dance, Chris Bryant, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Clive Myrie, Esther Freud, Gloria Estefan, Jared Harris, Jimmy Carter, John Lewis, John Waters, Jon Sopel, Juliet Stevenson, Kathy Lette, Keir Starmer, Kelly Hoppen, Keren Woodward, Mariella Frostrup, Mario Molina, Mark Radcliffe, Michael Ball, Michael Flatley, Michelle Collins, Midge Ure, Milton Jones, Mohamed ElBaradei, Neil Gaiman, Oliver Sacks, Paul McKenna, Richard Feynman, Sandi Toksvig, Tony Judt, Warren Buffett, Winston Churchill

Other ages

Before thirty In their thirties In their forties In their fifties Seventy and beyond