Failure & regret

What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?

122 answers answered between 2007 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A

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.

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On the record

Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Arts and letters 114 Politics and public life 7 Sport 1
Read by age Any age Before thirty 1 In their thirties 21 In their forties 21 In their fifties 31 In their sixties 25 Seventy and beyond 22
Order Earliest first Most recent Surprise me
Jon Snow
“You pinko!” by a Tory minister signing off at the end of an interview with me during the EU referendum campaign.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 March 2024 source ↗
Zack Polanski
I get trolled on a daily basis so it probably involved my teeth, but that was until I learned to love my teeth.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 December 2025 source ↗
Rory Stewart
On X, I am regularly called a traitor, a fraud, a grifter, a weakling, a narcissist, a coward and a child molester.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 January 2026 source ↗
Desmond Tutu Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
There will always be so many who might say, “Ah, he’s a politician masquerading as an archbishop.” Politics is so all-pervasive, and in my theology, obviously, all of life belongs to God, and you don’t have compartments, this is your economic life, this is your political life, this is your religious life. Religion encompasses all of those. But yes, I wouldn’t myself have said I was setting out to be a political animal.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

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