Recorded · The Guardian · 2025
Whenever I’m swimming in the lido at London Fields.
Since 2020
The most recent answers, and the ones most likely to be revised by the person who gave them.
120 people · 3,409 answers
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.
Singer and actor
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2023
In the hospital giving birth to my second daughter with my first daughter right there in the room as it was happening. I don’t remember any pain.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2024
The last few years. There’s a beauty to getting to an age where you really don’t care about stuff that used to bother you.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2020
Having fun with my sisters back in the day. I miss playing cards and fighting over crabs with them every weekend.
English actress and author
Recorded · The Guardian · 2023
The early family skiing holidays – before I’d broken an ankle and Gerald had torn a ligament – were just wonderful.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2025
Last summer with my boyfriend Richie. We had no plans – it was just wonderful.
If you had only one day left, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid?
Actor and producer
Recorded · The Guardian · 2021
I guess dancing up a storm in the living room with my husband and children, and the farmer from across the way. Man, that farmer can dance.
Reggae musician
Recorded · Clash · 2020
I would like to achieve a sense of happiness. My life is so full right now, and so fast-paced – and it always had – so that day would be a day of doing nothing.
Actor, playwright and theatre director
Recorded · The Guardian · 2021
Anywhere but the M25, rushing around in circles going nowhere with no one.
Filmmaker, actor and playwright
Recorded · The Guardian · 2021
I would stop working out right away. I wouldn’t lift another weight, I wouldn’t run another mile. I would sit on my ass and eat as many cookies as I could find.
Short-story writer; teacher at the Michener Center for Writers
Recorded · The Believer · 2026
I think that dying might bring about a profound loneliness. I don’t feel lonely in life, but I do think this would be a very hard discovery at the end.
Which decision paid off only after many years, when its value could not yet be proved?
Composer and lyricist for the musical theatre
Recorded · N/A · N/A
Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
Physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 2025
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2025
I've had some downturns in my career and various problems, but in fact all those kind of problems turned into something even better. It's kind of amazing, various times in my career.
Computer scientist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 2024
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2024
I would like to have been concerned about this existential threat sooner.
26th President of the United States, 1901–1909; Governor of New York 1899–1900; Assistant Secretary of the Navy 1897–1898
Recorded · KNOWOL · 2023
Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life.
Architect; Pritzker Prize laureate, 1995
Recorded · FavQs · 2026
I would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources, to move into the future.
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