Original subtitles

- In 1964 Granada Television brought together

a group of seven-year-olds

from all over the country and from all walks of life.

- I'm going to work in Woolworths.

- I read "The Financial Times."

- They talked about their dreams,

their ambitions, and their fears for the future.

- Everything throughout the year, it all landed on my head.

- For nearly half a century,

in a unique, groundbreaking series of films,

we have followed their lives every seven years.

They are now 46.

- Sometimes we go out and play nicely with the boys

and sometimes we go out and argue with the boys.

- Sue grew up in the East end of London.

- I don't think I'll

get married too early,

I'd like to have a full life first.

Marriage to me is a different thing to me,

and I've still got my ideals about marriage.

I don't know what it's all about.

- Sue was 24 when she married Billy,

and they had two children, William and Catherine.

- I think that to get married young

there must be things that you miss,

you must miss that crucial stage of being yourself,

because the minute you get married

you're no longer a single being,

you're a partnership and that should be the idea behind it.

- By the time Sue was 35, she was divorced.

- I've never sat down and thought, well what it was?

Was it this, was it that, I just knew it wasn't working.

I mean there have been relationships

when I could have settled but they didn't feel quite right,

so I've always come away and pulled away

and just waited until the right one come along,

if they ever do.

- At 42, when we filmed Sue in the karaoke bar

she brought Glen along to watch her sing.

♪ Baby, baby, baby, oh baby ♪

We'd just met and things are going well,

but now obviously things are going very well.

Well we've been engaged now for about 14 years.

I've not beaten any records,

but it's quite a long time isn't it, yeah.

Come on then.

- Jessie come on.

- We're completely different people,

he's very energetic and tidy minded

and I'm lazy and completely

inactive. - You're lazy?

- I am completely and absolutely lazy.

- Anything you want me to do?

- And what about the romance of getting married?

- Yeah, I mean I do admit it would be a nice party

and I quite relish the idea of having everyone round

and having a good old drink and a celebration,

but I can have a party anytime.

Who are you on the phone to?

- Never you mind.

- When I got married the primary reason

was because I wanted to have a child.

The two to me went together.

- Have you and Glenn thought

of having your own child?

- Glenn would have made a great dad

and when we first got together he asked me

if we could have a family and all that,

but I felt like I was past it really, to be honest.

I mean I had two teenagers and didn't want to do that again,

but he's loved bringing them up.

- Last time we talked about a bit of tension

in that area.

- No, I think that was probably just the age they were

and every family goes through that.

There was nothing in particular, I don't think,

it was just all part of growing up really.

- It wasn't easy being a single mother, was it?

- No it wasn't and I look back on it now

and I'm just amazed how I got through it.

- What was the toughest part of it?

- Probably a combination of not having enough money

to do what you want and being alone

and being scared when things happen,

when things go wrong,

which they always do when you've got kids.

You've got no one there to turn to

to talk about things like that.

- And you had to work?

- Yeah I had to work, yeah,

but I was always only part-time

so that I could fit it around school.

- So who was the biggest help to you

during this whole single parent?

- Well there's no doubt at all without my mom and dad

I'd have never survived it, they were brilliant,

they were really really good.

They mean the world to the kids

and they used to look after them,

always be there if something happened

and I had to go somewhere.

- Yeah nice aren't they, it's the first time we've seen.

- And how are they doing now?

- Yeah they're fine, dad's 80 now and mom's 78.

I'm so lucky that they're still reasonably active.

There you go, that's lovely that one, isn't it?

I've still got Catherine with me

because she hasn't found anywhere else to go.

I mean I'm sure she would love to leave me,

but I love it the fact that she's here.

We go shopping and we do girlie things,

do each other's hair and things like that,

so I would miss her but I do,

I know that she needs to get out and move on.

- I only had to have one filling,

that was about the only thing I had done.

- And what about William?

- Well, he went to Australia for a year

and he never settled back in being independent.

I think it was too much,

plus his room here was far too small.

I mean his computer was bigger than the room.

So he's renting.

It's just so hard for them to be able to afford something,

so in the future your kids are gonna be with you

for a long, long time.

A lot of my work is involved in making bookings

and dealing with hotels abroad.

- At 21, Sue worked for a travel agent.

At 35, part-time for a building society.

- Everything's changed for me 'cause I'm now

supporting myself a lot more than I was say a year ago.

- At 42, she went back to work full-time,

helping to run the courses in the legal faculty

of Queen Mary College, University of London.

At 49, she was the main administrator

for their post graduate programme.

So you like the responsibility?

- Yeah I love the responsibility.

I think I was born for the responsibility.

I'm now the coordinator of the entire programme,

so sort of Marge in charge really of them.

It's like my baby really,

I've nurtured it from its small beginnings

into what it is now.

Thank you very much, see you at graduation, yeah.

I really do enjoy it and I get up in the morning

and I don't ever think, oh god I can't face going in to work

but I know that happens to a lot of people,

so I'm lucky really.

Someone's having trouble downloading this attachment,

so I'll take this down for them.

- So you've got a lot of responsibility,

is there stress attached to it?

- Sometimes, I mean some parts of the year

are busier than others and you've got deadlines to meet,

but then in a way that's good

'cause it keeps you on your toes you know, never get bored.

- Where does the life of my respectable middle class mother

overlap with a working class slapper

who leaves her illegitimate child on a church door step?

- She was not--

- You don't know, she was young and frail and beautiful.

- It started not long after the last programme,

with Tony my neighbour, and he belonged to the group.

And I said, oh you know I've been wishing I could do

drama for years, since I was at school

and he said come along.

♪ That's the time you must keep on trying ♪

♪ Smile, what's the use of crying ♪

To stand on the stage and sing and have people

hopefully appreciate it, hopefully,

but there's still that little nervous thing,

the butterflies in your stomach when you're waiting

for the curtains to open, and it's a buzz really.

Realistically this is the point you really do

have to consider, you can't do two modules

that are taught at the same time obviously.

When I get on the stage to speak to 400 students,

now some people would find that very daunting

but I actually don't because I think if you know

that they can never ask you something

you don't know the answer to,

then I think that helps build your confidence

and I'm not exactly shy, am I.

It always takes one you see, once you get one

then other people tend to ask, but.

- You never went to university and now

you're right in the middle of a huge university machine.

- I suppose I should count my blessings

that I'm actually in a university having not done it myself.

Yeah. - Looking at it,

do you wish you had had that opportunity?

- Not really, it's the same as anything.

Why look back and say I wish I'd did this,

I wish I'd done that.

I've had a good career, at least I'll have my own home,

which is a new thing for my family,

'cause my mom and dad are obviously still

in a council place.

I'll never be a rich pensioner,

I'll never be able to travel the world once I retire,

I'm afraid, but as long as I can keep the house warm

and we can feed ourselves I think that will be fine.

- I don't like big boys hitting us

and a Prefect sending us out for nothing.

- When he was seven,

Paul was in care in a children's home in London.

Were you happy at the children's home in England?

- We didn't mind that really,

because we didn't know what was going on

'cause we were a bit young then.

Well as far as I know, my mother and father,

well they separated originally, I think,

they eventually got divorced,

I went to the boarding school for one year

and then we emigrated to Australia.

- Paul settled with his father and step-mother

in a suburb of Melbourne.

Would you like to get married, Paul?

Tell me why not?

- I don't like,

say you had a wife,

say you had to eat what they cooked you

and say I don't like greens, well I don't.

I know I'd prefer to be alone, really.

I can't say I don't want to get married,

'cause I think I do,

but I want to be happily married

and therefore I want to make sure I think.

- What was it that you fell in love with,

what is it about him?

- His helplessness, I suppose,

it was the motherly instinct in me

to pick him up and cuddle him,

he's also very good-looking I think,

but he doesn't agree with me.

In the summer he's got this cute little bum in shorts.

I mean I can tell quite a few stories here,

but the one that really irritates me the most

is when we have an argument he says, "That's it, leave me."

and I say, "Fine, alright I will one day."

We had our 20th wedding anniversary this last Christmas,

just before Christmas. - Which is a life sentence.

- Yeah everyone recons that we should be out of jail by now.

- To a certain extent we started thinking,

well do we really know each other now,

because you just get in the humdrum

of going to work, coming back home.

- Running kids here and there.

- The kids here and there, and I don't think you mean to,

but you probably stop thinking about each other a lot.

- You know, it's still the last person you want

to see at night before you go to sleep

and the first person you want to see when you wake up.

- Do you still like to cuddle and love

and all that sort of stuff?

- Yeah, but not in public.

- No, yes.

- But is the chemistry still there?

- Yes.

- You don't sound sure.

- Well, we like to keep it private.

- I had to wait for the answer.

I find it hard to express emotion most of the time,

although I'm getting on top of that more now.

I mean just the simple thing to say to Suzanne,

you know, I love you, something like that.

I mean I can tell you that,

but I really haven't been able to say it really

to Sue, you know.

It's a bit hard to talk about;

I did end up having to get a bit of help.

It wasn't directly due to our relationship,

it started at work unfortunately,

which brought my self-esteem down

which tended to affect everything else.

I know the lack of confidence is there,

it still applies to me but I don't dwell on it,

it's there and I have to

put up with it. - Yeah.

I just think you take on a little bit more

of each others' personality because whenever I was decisive

and I made a decision and say, well let's do this because,

Paul, not that he couldn't make the decision

but he had all these questions to ask and I used to think,

ah, stop asking questions

and I suppose now I start to questions myself,

well maybe you should ask the question so it is

that bit of living with the other personality.

- I was gonna be a policeman

but I thought how hard it would be to join in.

I was gonna be a Phys Ed teacher but one of the teachers

told me that you had to get up in to university.

- As a young man, Paul spent many years

in the building trade and then moved on into factory work.

- Okay the question was Gracie Field

sang in the what of the moonlight.

It's a retirement village with independent living

and then it's got a sister living in the hostel

which is mainly where I work.

Which has got six letters, Gracie Field sang.

They have their own laundry, it's a complete unit,

they have their own lock up garage.

So there's a couple of parcels there

that probably need delivering.

And that's why Paul's there, I call him the man

about the house at work because he changes light globes,

problems with their taps they go and check it out,

cleans the guttering, fixes squeaky doors or doors

that have broken 'cause the village is now 24 years old

so the maintenance is starting to gather.

How are you going up there, Paul?

- When the job came up, I said to Suzanne

that if there was any problem at all

with us working together then I'd leave.

but so far we've found it really quite good.

Hello, how are ya?

- I'm good, Paul, how are you?

- I've probably always been a little bit more relaxed

around older people probably.

I always liked older people

as I was growing up, funny enough.

- By the time they were 28,

Paul and Sue had two children, Katie and Robert.

Katie did well at school and went on to university,

the first person in her entire family ever to do so.

Robert trained as a car mechanic.

He met his wife Stacey when they were teenagers,

and now they have five children.

- So there's Lucas, who is nine,

then there's Ryan who's about to turn seven

at the end of this month.

Then there's Hayley who's just turned five

and she'll start school in the new year.

Then there's Shane or better known as Shane-o,

and he is three this week.

He's the joker, I think, out of the lot of them,

You know if he does something and you laugh,

he'll laugh with you, and he loves a joke.

And then there's little Troy that's 12 weeks old.

I look back at my grandmother,

and I've taken some wonderful lessons from her.

Grandma made us all feel that we were her special number one

but I really think that that's the secret

to being a grandparent is to make every child feel

that they have someone that they can relax with,

be themselves with.

Grandparents now have a really huge part to play

in their parents' lives because the pressure's on them

to work so much and grandparents fill that hole

of Mum not being home every day.

So, Cynd, I've already made the frog in the ponds,

so there they are for the kiddies.

- Great, your Rich likes fairy bread.

- Get some spiders and snakes in there.

♪ Happy birthday to Shane-o ♪

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ - Ready, set, go!

- It's a real struggle for them financially,

but at the same time, you know, like all young kids

there's areas that we look at and go,

"Well, we didn't have that."

I've got 23 new pieces

and I don't know how many halfpenny pieces I've got now.

- Look there's a whole stack of duckies over there.

None of our kids have got credit cards.

They don't live a credit life. - Yet.

- Yet, I mean they try and pay as they go,

which is what we've always thought,

and that's kept our head above water, just.

We always thought if we were unemployed or out of work,

if you own your house, you've got a huge buffer,

and Robert's of the same belief.

- In their 20s, Paul and Sue sold up,

bought an old van and travelled across Australia.

- I think it brought us closer together,

because we really got to know each other

and we relied on each other so much.

- One of the most important things we ever did

with our children was spend time with 'em,

and particularly when you've got holidays.

You know, go camping with 'em.

- ]sue] Well we went over to visit Katie

'cause she's was working up in the top end

of Yorkshire on a community farm.

- We were missing her, we just don't wanna tell her that.

- Well they miss you when you're away.

Do you miss them when you're away?

- I didn't miss 'em. like oh God, I want to be around them

but I thought about them a lot

and appreciated them a lot which is probably good.

- So are the three of you getting on well?

- Yeah most of the time.

- As long as we're not in the car getting lost.

- They're atrocious in the car.

- But other than that we're good.

- No, it is good.

Well when we were in London we went to Greenwich.

It was built as a Maritime Retirement Village almost.

For the sailors from the Napoleonic War.

So that was all really interesting

because we work in retirement villages.

And these buildings here

were built before Australia was even discovered.

So that's pretty amazing.

Katie was in awe of it.

Because in her degree she did art history.

So she just loved it.

- What does university mean?

- Are you going to try and point

your grandchildren in to education do you think?

- You want them to have a good education

no matter what they do.

- Better than you had maybe?

- But that's my fault really.

I mean I just didn't work hard enough I guess.

You hope the school systems have changed

to encourage kids to go on

because one thing you can't take away from people

is an education.

I mean the one thing my daughter's taught me

is it doesn't matter what you do there's room for all of us.

And even to the point where

if you don't work you're still teaching us something,

you know your teaching other people to care.

- How are you dealing with getting old?

- I don't think you really notice it.

I mean you still think you're the same.

Its maybe when you try to do

something physically too quickly and pull a muscle

that just reminds you that your getting older.

- Are you fearful of the future?

Of disability or unable to do things?

- You hope that you're going to be one of the

fortunate ones and not get ill in any way.

- Hey Ken.

- Hi Paul, how are you?

- Maybe where I work, I may have helped that recently

because people just tend to get on with their lives

no matter what.

- And then that's the one with the palace.

- You've got a nice shot of a bin there.

- That one's good you're getting better,

you are getting better.

- Do you measure your life in terms

of success and failure in any sense?

- No not really.

I mean I suppose the success is that we're sitting here

together and we haven't had tragedy happen to us.

- It's just about getting on with life

and enjoying our grandchildren, our children,

and our friends.

- Yeah, our goals of life have never--

- And then work just gets in the way.

- Well we pretend we've got swords

and we make the noise of the swords fighting

and when somebody stabs us we go ahh.

- Neil grew up in a Liverpool suburb.

And had dreams of going to Oxford, but didn't get in.

Instead he went to Aberdeen University

but dropped out after the first term.

At 21, Neil was working on a building site

and living in a squat.

- I would like to be somebody in a position of importance

and I've always thought this.

But I don't think I'm the right sort of person

to carry the responsibility for whatever it is.

I always thought well I'd love,

to be possibly even love to be in politics

or something like this.

- At 28 we found Neil homeless

wandering around the west coast of Scotland.

- If the money runs out

well then for a few days there's nowhere to go to.

That's all you go do.

I simply have to find the warmest shed I can find.

- At 35, he was living in a council estate

on the most northerly part of Britain, the Shetland Islands.

What would you like to be doing say in 7 years?

- I can think of all kinds of things

that I'd like to be doing.

The real question is what am I likely to be doing.

- What are you likely to be doing?

- That's a horrible question.

I tend to think the most likely answer is that

I will be wandering homeless around the streets of London.

Can I just point out some of the considerable disadvantages?

First of all they are geographically--

- At 42, Neil had moved to London

and was a Liberal Democrat on Hackney Council.

- While I was in Shetland I felt very strongly

that I should become involved in politics

simply because I felt I was not achieving

anything in the ways I really wanted to.

- By 49, Neil had left London,

moved to Cumbria in the North West of England,

and was a Liberal Democrat member

of his local district Council.

- Fairly simple.

It was a committee decision, a majority decision,

his own group on the establishment committee

agreed with the decision.

- Counsellor Hughes.

- Well for Council Nines information,

Counsellor Cook has reconsidered his opinion

that he entered at that meeting.

Here we are in the centre of the ward

I represent on the Council,

these are our public toilets.

I can assure you that no more fierce battle

has ever been fought either on the playing fields

or indeed on the battlefields of England

to save what might appear to be a comparatively

insignificant local amenity.

- It sounds vaguely comic

but presumably it's not to you?

- When you live in a small community

you become very proud rightly of the facilities here.

And people are willing to play a part

in helping to keep them going

but they don't want to be ignored,

they don't want to be marginalised.

My strength is being able to keep going really.

And my weakness is not being able

to take any positive course of action.

No formal education can prepare anybody for life.

Only life can prepare you for what comes.

And sooner or later you're going to

have to cross certain barriers.

There are a few things I would like to say.

And the first thing to say is

there's been tremendous goodwill towards the series.

But I'm also aware that I'm not the only participant

who wants to set the record straight in a number of ways.

For so many millions of people,

I'm here wearing my heart on my sleeve

and they think they know absolutely everything about me.

There were countless people writing to me

saying I know exactly how you feel.

And actually from those letters I would say none of them,

not a single one of them, knew exactly how I was feeling.

- I've got a great deal of respect for the Liberal Democrats

but I think that I won't vote for them this time--

- Here in Cumbria I'm really glad to be doing what I do,

to be representing people at a local political level,

but in one sense I'm doing that

because it's the only way I've been able to make any money.

I get a derisory amount of money for being a Counsellor.

I do enjoy the work but I've been completely unsuccessful

in trying to find a paid career of any kind.

I have always wanted to write as a career

and indeed have written huge amounts

and ironically despite appearing in this programme,

so frequently nobody has ever shown any serious interest

in any of the work I do and believe me

it's a great deal more important to me

than anything I can say on a television screen.

Even if somebody sent it back to me

and said well I've read it and its rubbish actually,

that would be very demoralising

but at least some interaction would have taken place.

There's hardly a day goes by when I don't write.

- It's a great gift isn't it?

- It is but it shouldn't be a sort of masturbation

about which nobody else knows anything.

- Neil Hughes is the Liberal Democrat candidate.

- I and the Liberal Democrats

want to see a just and fair society in which everyone--

- In 2006, I was invited to go to Australia

to give a talk and the chap who introduced me said

Neil is clearly such a profoundly motivated politician

that we can all expect to see him as Prime Minister

of the United Kingdom in the future.

Now this wasn't a joke I assure you

he said this with absolute seriousness.

Now it was ludicrous but this is how wildly skewed

the perceptions have become.

I mean do you think I would really

have been invited to Australia if they were aware

that I was someone who lives on a few quid a week benefit

and has as much chance of changing the future

of the United Kingdom as

I don't know someone who's serving a lifetime jail sentence.

Yes I'd say I believed in God.

- Are you religious?

- Well I go to church with my parents on Sundays.

I don't know even now whether I do believe in God or not.

I've thought an awful lot about it actually

and I still don't know.

- And how has he been treating you?

- Well I said to somebody last week

that I preferred the Old Testament to the New Testament

because in the Old Testament God is very unpredictable

and that's I think how I've seen him in my life.

And Doreen as well and also--

I was first a Lay Reader in London

after completing a little more training

I was relicensed by the Bishop of Carlisle.

Well good morning, welcome to our service today.

Just a couple of notices first.

If you haven't already been told the proposed pet show

is unfortunately cancelled due--

I'm a Lay Minister.

I'm licenced to carry out quite a number of functions

which includes leading services, preaching,

taking part in the readings,

helping to distribute the Communion and so on.

In fact I can do more or less everything a Priest can do.

To what extent am I a good model for others?

I don't know.

On the other hand I am angry that so many doors

have been closed not just for me but for so many people.

I do feel nobody's listening out there,

you know there seem to be few currents

that are encouraging people to stand up for their rights,

not just their strict legal rights

but their rights to be human.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit.

I'm not unappreciative of the honour its been

to be able to serve the church,

to be able to serve my community,

and I want to make that absolutely clear

and it's true that I think it was Abercam who said

life is what happens while you're waiting for something else

but it's not the sort of place

where someone who wants to change society is best employed.

I would have thought that was pretty obvious.

In the winter if you live in the country it would just

be all wet and there wouldn't be anything for miles around.

We're a very quiet village.

There's always room for more activity

and for more people being involved

but I think we do fairly well as a diversity of groups.

They're still trying to persuade me to go in.

Actually apparently Alan has cried off at the last minute

so there's just the two of them.

I think it was Pascal,

the great Philosopher and Mathematician,

who said that if a man can live happily

in his own living room for most of his life

then he's achieved the upmost philosophical breakthrough

and philosophically speaking that's true but I can't.

You only stick me in my living room for one hour on my own

and I want to be out doing something,

I want to be out changing things.

I have always had a nervous complaint.

I've had it since I was 16.

It was responsible for my leaving university

and for some of my difficulties with work.

- Do you worry about your sanity?

- Other people sometimes worry about it.

- Like who?

- As I've said I sometimes can be found behaving

in an erratic fashion, sometimes I get very frustrated,

very angry for no apparent reason,

for a reason which won't be apparent

to other people around me.

I don't see any way out.

I've thought of everything I possibly could,

it seemed to me for a long time that getting a reliable job

and a nice place to live would be the solution.

Well I haven't succeeded.

I can't see any immediate future at all.

Although there have been times in my life

when I've been suicidal, that wasn't one of them.

- So there have been worse than what we saw?

- Yes, but it's not for this programme to expose my

private feelings and yet many people feel it has ultimately.

Although this time round, I've been far more candid

than I perhaps ever have in the past.

My formal contact with the psychiatric establishment

belongs mostly to my need in later teens

and a short period in my early twenties.

But I soon came to the opinion that

I could help myself far better than

those who were purporting to help me.

But I was aware even then

that a lot of the therapeutic technique is about

leading people to exactly this conclusion if its unwell,

so I'm not going down the line of criticising

the medical establishment.

- But did you refuse to

go in to any sort of treatment?

- No, I did have contact.

- But then you discontinued it?

- Yes.

- Do you still think that was wise?

- Yes.

- Are you scared of getting old?

- Yeah I don't want to live to be that old.

I think if I can reach something like 70 or 75

in reasonable health, that will be quite enough for me.

When I get married I don't want to have any children

because they are always doing naughty things

and making the whole house untidy.

I always told myself that I would never have children.

- Why?

- Well because children inherit something from their parents

and even if my wife were the most high spirited,

and ordinary, and normal of people

the child would still stand a very fair chance

of being not totally full of happiness

because of what he or she will have inherited from me.

- Have you ever really had

a romantic, emotional relationship?

- Well I've had several

but the fact that I'm living alone still

obviously portrays the fact that none of them has endured.

- Is there a reason for that?

- Relationships always involve two people.

- But the string of failures

does that tell us something?

- Well I'm sure it does.

Any fool can see that, I'm not saying you're a fool.

- And what does it tell us?

- It tells you what you like,

it tells you that I haven't been

successful in relationships.

It may tell you that I'm intolerant

but more likely it tells you that I don't have the capacity

for making a relationship work.

But I must stress again that it does take two.

I have never walked out of any relationship with anybody.

It sounds like ghostly coloured people.

You think of a purple person with red eyes and yellow feet,

it can't really think of what they really look like.

I find it hard to believe that I was ever like that

but there's the evidence.

And probably when I was 7 I just lived in a wonderful world

where everything was sensational on,

I could be happy and I could be miserable the next minute.

- What makes you happy?

- Happy is a difficult word, how many people are happy?

Perhaps we're most happy when we're not aware of it

and enjoying a relaxed meal with some friends,

just being with friends.

I think the few weekends in the year

when I'm lucky to be able to go and stay

with some of my long term friends I'm really happy.

I can think of hardly anything better than

walking across the fields when we just chat

about the things we're both interested in

and our aspirations and I think that's the noblest

and in many ways most satisfying of relationships

you could possibly have.

How it would be if we live next door to each other?

I don't know it might be very different

but maybe the joy in some relationships

is that you see some people only infrequently.

- I don't think you want to go to university

if you want to be an astronaut.

Watch this.

- Peter and Neil were childhood friends

growing up in Liverpool.

Peter went to a comprehensive school

and went on to get a history degree from London University.

- I would like to think that democracy is here to stay,

perhaps we haven't got full democracy.

In fact we probably haven't, it's a pretty good system.

- Are you surprised

by the way England's been governed?

- I'm not surprised with the people

that govern it at the moment, no.

I've even stopped being amazed.

- Why?

- Why?

Well I don't want to get dragged in to party politics

you know basically this is the most incompetent,

uncaring bloody shower we've ever had.

- After 28UP,

Peter decided not to continue in the film.

- Why did you pull out?

- I pulled out because of

the responses and the reactions that

my participation drew in the weeks afterwards.

Particularly in the tabloid press.

They decided they were going to portray me

as the angry young Red in Thatcher's England.

Well it's just the principle that's all.

I think it was articulating at the time

what a lot of people my age and my background

were thinking and I was an easy target.

But I was absolutely taken aback,

completely genuinely shocked at

what I saw as the level of malice and ill will

directed towards me.

Until you have experienced it yourself

you can't begin to appreciate how it feels.

- So now your back, why did you come back?

- I feel a lot happier with myself,

happier in my own skin, and then secondly more specifically

because I want to promote the music and the band I'm in.

♪ It was a goers town ♪

- And what are you called?

- We're called The Good Intensions.

♪ But when he hit that bang ♪

I'd always played in rock bands,

some of the spectacularly bad bands.

What really got me into this music was

being exposed to the music of Grant Parsons.

Because way back in the day I was a big Elvis Costello fan

and I read an interview with him in which he said

well if you think I'm a good song writer

listen to this guy Grant Parsons.

It was almost like an epiphany.

It was like I was hearing the music

I'd been waiting to hear all my life.

Once Kellen Zeffer said she loved me

and I'm going to marry her when I grow up.

It doesn't appeal to me at all at the moment.

I'm just gone 20.

I haven't even been abroad yet in my life.

So no way am I going to settled down.

- So what do you want to do?

Do you want to sort of record me and Pete,

to record what we are doing and you'll work round it?

- I think that's good.

- We were working in an office together

when we joined the office band

and that's how we got to know each other.

- So Gabby, was it love at first sight?

- Well I had a sneaking suspicion that Pete liked me

'cause he was really rude and sarcastic to me all the time

so I thought oh, I think he's probably quite keen.

- No, that's not true.

- You've always played together since then?

- Yeah more or less.

We probably stopped for a while when the kids were little.

- Our boy's 19, our daughter is 16.

- And how are they doing?

- They're great, they're really good.

- They're remarkably well.

Our son is in his first year at university

and our daughter is coming up to her GCSE's.

Once you have your own kids you have this huge realisation

of how your own parents felt about you

and what they did for you.

- What's the greatest gift

that a parent can give a child?

- It's that unstinting love and support and their time.

The time I think children value that more than anything.

You giving unconditionally, you giving them your time.

Well if I can't be an astronaut

I'd like to be a Bridewell Sergeant in the police force

like my dad is.

- So are you under pressure to get a job?

- Yeah I suspect I am from the parents,

they keep dropping hints.

Teachers are under valued and under rated

and the whole the system is beginning to crumble.

People outside of it don't realise that

but it is and it's very disillusioning.

I left teaching not long after that programme.

It was actually nothing to do with the programme.

That was a misunderstanding at the time

I think which took hold in the press.

I'd been planning to leave teaching anyway

and I just didn't see the long term future in it for myself

and I just thought I had to be honest with myself about that

and honest to the kids I was teaching at the time

and move on to something else.

- It might be better to start off at the end of the line.

- After teaching Peter studied law

and joined the Civil Service.

Gabby also works there.

- The Civil Service despite changes currently taking place

is still a comparatively a pretty decent employer.

So shall we do one of the new ones?

- What area of the Civil Service are you in?

- Department for Work and Pensions.

- So you've changed the key in that one?

- I've changed the key to an F sharp, sorry about that.

- Oh, marvellous.

- You've got MP3, I assume.

- When Pete writes he often wants to share that,

and at a fairly early stage, talk about what he's writing

and if it's no good I have to tell him.

And that's quite difficult isn't it?

- I'm sure it is, yeah.

♪ She was running down roads I didn't know ♪

- So when we started work on the album we're doing now

Pete said to me I've got 120 song ideas I want to go through

and I said but of those 120

really we need to get it down to about 10

so I am going to have to tell you that 110 are no good.

- How do you take criticism?

- Well I think I take it better than I used to.

- That's not setting the bar very high though is it?

- No.

- What have been for you the best times?

- Tommy Smith scoring the second goal in Rome.

Definitely one of the all times.

- Which game was that?

Which game was that?

That European Cup Final 1977.

That's still up there by the way.

- But along with what?

- But well getting married for the second time,

and having two children

have been hugely significant moments in my life.

- What do you want out of life?

- The satisfaction of knowing

that I've left some sort of imprint

rather than just lived out my life.

♪ You've been gone for so long eventually ♪

♪ No one's looking for you anymore ♪

I hesitate to say to think I have made my mark now

because that sounds horrendously vain

but I've created a body of work of which I feel very proud.

I feel I've achieved something of lasting value.

And in the last two or three years

we have began to become reasonably successful

in terms of critical responses.

We were voted the UK's Americana Act of the Year

at the British Country Music Awards.

From time to time like anybody else,

I'll look back and think I wish I hadn't done that

or I wish I'd done that differently

but I don't think really life is there to be regretted.

Life is there to be lived.

And I think the most important thing

is to feel that by enlarge you haven't compromised too much

and that you've moved your life on where

you want your life to go.

- And what about the other children?

Where are they now?

What are they doing?

- I would like to get married when I grow up.

I mean I know its not possible to be happy all the time

but as much of the time that was possible.

- When I grow up I'd like to

find out all about the moon and all that.

It would seem really ridiculous

to any of my friends who watched this

if I said Christ aren't I a great success look at me.

- When I get married I'd like to have two children.

I don't like babies.

- I feel like bundling when there's already a fight.

I think I admire people with great determination.

Like people who have just come up from nothing.