Opinions: What was your biggest disappointment?

RALPH STEADMAN, cartoonist: I had a terrible disappointment a month ago. Burglars stole all my wines - 300 bottles worth nearly pounds 5,000. It was such a disappointment because I thought they were going to take my mother-in-law. They even came back a second time and I thought, 'This is it]', but they didn't take her that time either. They took a statue of the Virgin Mary and she's Jewish.

SUSAN HAMPSHIRE, actress: I was given a doll for Christmas after the war. It was a rag doll with a china head which was a real luxury. After Christmas I took it on the Underground and a huge gust of wind blew its head off and it smashed. I remember people standing around laughing and I had to pretend that I didn't care and it didn't matter.

JOHNNY VAUGHAN, Naked City presenter: My lawyer telling me I was going to get 18 months for a drugs charge: I got four years] It was a big disappointment, but not as devastating as Chelsea losing the FA Cup Final the other weekend due to bad refereeing] For the last 24 years of my life I have been building up to that moment and the second penalty was just outrageous.

PETER STRINGFELLOW, nightclub owner: Los Angeles - after I'd spent three and a half million dollars opening my most glamorous club there. I lived in Beverly Hills and that was a disappointment, my club's success was a disappointment, the people of LA were a disappointment, the coastline of LA down by Santa Monica was a disappointment. I found the whole experience disappointing, and closed the club after a year and a half.

PETER RAINES, unemployed: Auditions. I've been trying to get into drama school, and you have to pay an average of pounds 20 for each audition. I spent a fortune on colleges only to be told I hadn't been accepted. Then one college recalled me. I was certain I was going to get it, and just cried when they told me I hadn't. I've stopped trying now - and I've realised I probably wasn't cut out to be an actor. I couldn't cope with all that rejection.

DR DOROTHY ROWE, psychologist: The biggest disappointments come in childhood, and the first is always the worst. Mine was on my first day at school. My mother told my older sister to meet me at playtime to give me my lunch. I waited and waited in the playground but she didn't come.

JIM FOSTER, pensioner: Now that I am old my biggest disappointments are no longer over personal failures. I am disappointed in my fellow human beings. Nothing seems to have been learnt from the suffering of past wars. The same atrocities are being committed - perhaps worse than before. That's my biggest disappointment in life now.

LIZ HARDING, sign writer: Sex.

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