Finally, the solution. Spencer7593 got me on my way but the final code required is as follows:
$con=mysqli_connect("localhost","user","password","test");
if (mysqli_connect_errno($con)) {echo "MySQL conn. err:".mysqli_connect_error();}
$sql = "SELECT column_comment,column_name FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name = 'mytablename';";
$query = mysqli_query($con,$sql) or die(mysql_error());
$columnArray = array();
while(($result = mysqli_fetch_array($query, MYSQL_ASSOC))){
if($result['column_comment'])
{
$CurCol = $result['column_comment'];
}
else
{
$CurCol = "No text stored";
}
$CurName = $result['column_name'];
$columnArray[$CurName]=$CurCol;
}
//echo $columnArray['FirstName']; //test example to return "1(a) First Name"
So I looped through fetch_fields to get the corresponding column comments, and then looped through the result of the answers query to display each answer down the next table column.