What has been your biggest disappointment?

When I lost a race for the United States Senate, I thought the world was going to end for me politically, and 18 years later I was elected President of the United States. The biggest disappointment was that I wasn't able to communicate properly to the American people — with the proper conviction and the proper ability — where the country really stood. The pessimists, the naysayers, the change-wanters overwhelmed me, and I wasn't good enough. I wasn't articulate enough to have the country understand that we weren't in a recession, that we were in a rather booming economy in the last half of my presidency. That was a personal shortcoming, a failure on my path.

That my competitive pole vault career ended at the age of 15.

Failing CSE Physics. Twice.

Failing my driving test first time; that was a disappointment on a geological scale.

Not getting a part in the school play.

The failure of my party to make the big political breakthrough it deserves.

Not to have been a rock'n'roll star.

The closure of Talk magazine.

That I don't have thin ankles.

Not singing in a band.

My A-level grades – but I got over it.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

Being phoned by the prime minister and sacked from my role as a home office minister in front of 100 people I was about to speak to. But to be fair to Tony, he did appoint me in the first place.

Not being on Morecambe & Wise.

If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings. … And for us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing. But it is not something that I intend to stop working on in the remaining 18 months.

Labour losing the 2015 election: we weren’t able to help the people who needed us most.

Seeing the future die, from Bobby Kennedy to dear friends.

Not becoming chancellor.

I am rarely disappointed. I try to make the best of things.

When I was a 26-year-old news correspondent, the head of BBC news gathering, Chris Cramer, refused to let me take up a six-month attachment on the foreign affairs programme Correspondent. He said: “I think it’s too soon; you could do it later.” He’d never have said that to a man.