Original subtitles

In 1964, Granada Television brought together a group of seven-year-olds.

When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut.

We have followed their lives every seven years.

I don't want to keep still cos life, you know, don't wait for nobody.

They've talked about their dreams...

If I could have two girls and two boys.

..their ambitions...

I'd quite like to get into politics.

..and their fears for the future.

Life is what happens while you're waiting for something else.

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

You've got to make the most of it while you've got it.

That's how you become the person you are.

It's a picture of how any person, how they change.

Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.

We first met Paul at a children's home in West London.

Along with Symon.

I thought I'm old and that, enough to get a job.

I'll just walk around...

and see what I can find.

They say, "Where's your father, then, you know,

"when your mum's out at work?"

And I just tell 'em I ain't got one.

When Paul left the children's home, he moved to Australia.

Were you happy at the children's home any more?

I didn't mind that, really, because we didn't know what was going on

because we were a bit young.

When I was born, you know, an illegitimate child,

you know, that's...

something that's only whispered about.

People, you know, feel strongly about it in those days,

but nowadays it's...

It's not a serious matter, the serious point is,

is whether you stay with somebody or you leave them.

My father got remarried. Erm...

And how do you get on with your stepmum?

Pretty well, but like I said before, I mean, I'm not, I'm just not close,

I'm not really close to my father either.

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 er, one of the teachers told me that...

you had to get up into university.

As a young man, Paul spent many years in the building trade

and then moved on into factory work.

I was gonna be a film star, but...

..now I'm gonna be an electrical engineer,

which is more to reality, really.

By 21, Symon was working

in the freezer room of Wall's Sausages in London.

I know I can't stay at Wall's forever, I mean, it's just not me.

I couldn't stay there for that long, my mind would go dead.

Do you never feel you should be doing better jobs than these?

Aren't you worth more than this?

No, I haven't, really. I suppose I just like hard work, I don't know.

Not really interested in

moving up... up the scale. Why?

I don't need the hassle to be the... charger, manager, or whatever.

Tell me, do you have any girlfriends?

Well, not many.

What do you think about girls? Not much.

Erm... since 21... I've got married.

Had a couple of kids. And, erm...

By 28, he had married Yvonne. And they had five children.

What would you like to give your children that you never had?

They've got everything that...

They've even got what I never had.

So... Which is what?

A father, innit?

By 35, they were divorced.

All I want out of life is to be happy, and when I say happy,

I want to be happily married as well.

Well, what was it you fell in love with? What was it about him?

His helplessness, I suppose, it was the motherly instinct in me.

To pick him up and cuddle him, and...

He's also very good-looking, I think, but he doesn't agree with me.

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

In their 20s, Paul and Sue sold up, bought an old van,

and travelled across Australia.

I think it brought us closer together because, you know,

we really got to know each other and we relied on each other so much.

I'd never been so relaxed in my life.

I felt a lot more confident in myself.

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 Stacy when they were teenagers

and they now have five children.

By the time he was 42, Symon had married Vienetta.

Used to go out when we were younger. We met in the laundrette.

Once a week. Once a week in the laundrette.

Vienetta already had a daughter, Miriam.

And she and Symon had a son, Daniel.

Ah-ha!

Obviously, when children come into foster care,

family and friends are involved as well, we have to ensure that...

By 49, Symon and Vienetta had decided to train as foster parents.

Went to boarding school when I was young

and I always felt that that was...

regimental.

They didn't allow for personal care, for loving from the adult carers,

so I wanted to do something like that for myself,

you know, in my own home.

Do you know why Uncle Sam looks younger?

Because he's so laid back.

When we first started fostering,

we didn't even realise that you actually got a payment for doing it.

We just did it because we wanted to help.

About four years ago, we were told that we'd looked after 130-odd kids.

It's a very hard thing,

but it's also magnificently easy when it goes well.

I've still got five children.

They haven't really taken

the breakup of my first marriage too well.

I've got still to get to grips with that and...

get to them and make them understand that Daddy is still Daddy.

Last year, Symon invited his entire family

to celebrate Vienetta's birthday.

They're all together now.

They've come round and they've seen that Dad is still Dad,

whatever's happened.

Time is the healer, isn't it? You rush, and push, and pull.

You might be able to do that with a parcel,

but you can't do that with a person.

It made me feel 110%, everybody together, and everybody here for me,

it was, it was... It was nice.

Yeah, it was beautiful. It was nice.

So, what's happened in the last seven years since we were here?

Grandchildren, lots of them.

So how many have you got now? I've got ten now.

It's lovely. It just tires me out, I haven't got the energy.

All the time.

Run! Run!

What's happened in the family in the last seven years?

Got another grandchild.

Brody. So there's six.

Talk nicely to him. Hey, Benny, Benny.

Katie's a school teacher.

She has a man in her life now.

Very nice chap, which we're pleased about.

Hopefully, more grandchildren.

No pressure!

Look at that. They do look very happy

in all that mud, don't they, Shane?

The fact we've been married for 40 years

is just really a fluke, really,

you know, like, no, but what I mean is we've tried hard

and that's part of the success,

but you don't know when you're gonna get married

that it's gonna succeed and go for 40 years, you have no idea.

You can see Windsor Castle from that house.

Oh, look at that.

We don't see each other...

Over the years, Paul and Sue have met up with Symon and Vienetta

when visiting family in England.

Come on, let me get you organised.

But now, for the first time,

Symon and Vienetta have come to Australia.

Hello! Hello.

We got on really well when we visited them in England.

I think Symon and Paul are very similar.

Symon's very creative, sort of artistic.

A beautiful person to be around.

And Vienetta, well, her and I are

just two peas out of the same pod.

I just think it's a wonderful thing to be able to invite them

and they be able to come out here

because it's not like it's just across the road, it's a big trip,

and they're gonna share Christmas with us and our family.

Would your life have been totally different

if you'd had the chance Paul had to come to Australia?

For me then, it probably would have been better.

To actually try and figure it out now, would it have been better?

I wouldn't wanna say because your life is as it is,

so not as it could be. Yeah.

I don't like the big boys hitting us

and the prefects sending us out, out for nothing.

And this park, I remember this park, but I've never walked down it...

At 21, when Paul was in London, we decided to take him and Symon

back to the children's home.

Why were you there?

I believe it was a divorce custody dispute.

Most children at that age, if they were taken away from their parents,

they wouldn't be overly happy.

No.

Did you get to see much of your parents?

I can only vaguely remember my dad coming...

..to visit every now and then.

I was there for about six years.

And the only thing I really, really missed was my mum.

She was everything to me and she wasn't there.

Remember the tiles?

She couldn't cope with the situation of having to look for me

and she didn't have a place of her own at the time.

Remember Midgey? He was a real bastard.

'You felt that you were kept in order all the time.'

'Kids did get the cane if they were caught doing anything wrong.'

So did you get caned? Not that I can remember.

I was a very, very good boy.

He was the tailor.

I remember him.

I didn't get a lot of cuddles,

and affects you, the way you treat your kids,

in as much as you try to do it more,

but you probably don't do it as much as some other people do.

I wanted to love my children,

but I used to try to give them discipline instead.

Instead of...

just giving them the little hugs and stuff they needed,

that I knew they needed because I needed it.

The headmaster's son used to shoot the squirrels off the trees.

'I definitely felt insecure. I can still remember that.'

I-I didn't feel insecure...

when I was being told be here,

be there, do this, do that. Yeah.

Where I felt insecure was outside of all of that.

You can't believe after so many years

that things have really not changed all that much, you know?

Paul took Symon to the children's home where he lived

when he first arrived in Australia.

So, how old were you when you first came here?

I was somewhere between seven and eight years of age, I would say.

We pretty much landed in Australia...

wasn't all that long before my father arranged for us

to come up here and live.

And how was it to be here?

The best childhood memories I've got is of being up here.

Why didn't he take you home to live with them?

Well, I think Dad was a coat and dress designer,

and they were also trying to set a house up,

and that's just the way that they chose to do it.

My dad, despite...

..what other members of the family might have...

He was a good man, he was a kind man.

He was strict, but he was kind.

You know, I was always frightened of everything as a young child

and I think it, you know, slowly but surely

it just slowly brought me out of myself.

Like Paul, I was very shy when I was young

and I think this place would give you

the confidence to do things for yourself.

I think my main weakness is I don't really take a grip of life.

I know if I ever wanted to get on, I could do it.

I think what it is, really, I'm just waiting for an excuse to use it.

This one just there. Yeah, yeah.

Both the wives say that you both lack confidence.

The lack of confidence, you sort of second guess yourself

or question yourself all the time.

Just like just now, I noticed we both looked at each other

because we both knew exactly what we were going to say.

But we waited, we waited for the other one to say it. Yeah.

What's been the saddest, toughest time for you in your life so far?

Oh, I think early years,

going away from the home and going to the boarding school,

and living away from home here as well.

Here's Granddad. Hey.

My father died approximately four years ago.

That was very sad.

He was the one constant in my life.

Sorry.

Even though I knew my mum wasn't well at all

and she was probably dying, I still felt she'd be there forever.

When she actually died, there were so many things that I never asked.

Why did you not marry Dad or stay with him?

So there were so many things that...

were left unsaid.

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.

One of the fundamental premises of this series of films

is you can see the man in the seven-year-old child.

Basically, what you see is

a seven-year-old shy, not very confident, worried about everything,

that's what I was like... then

and, and to a great degree, still like that.

I'm not making light of what I have achieved,

but I wasn't going to make any wonderful achievements.

I think that was pretty obvious I was going to be just a worker.

Hiya, Paul. How are you?

OK, everybody, tucker's ready! Anyone for some food?

Do you have any regrets?

There's just no place for regrets in this world.

But I mean, I've been lucky, meeting Susan,

I've been with her longer than I was with my dad.

And she's been an unbelievable influence on my life.

Getting me to see the positive side of things, rather than the negative.

Maybe one regret is probably would have liked more children.

I feel OK just getting on with life.

Just sort of keeping up.

But, er, I know if I really wanted to, I could get on.

The sooner you understand who you are,

the sooner you understand what you can do.

It's taken me... virtually 60 years to understand who I am.

When I leave the school, I'm going to College Court.

And then I will be going to Westminster boarding school

if I pass the exam.

And then we think I'm going to, erm, Cambridge and Trinity Hall.

John went to Westminster.

Then on to read law at Christchurch, Oxford.

I do believe parents have a right to educate their children

as they think fit. I think someone who works on the assembly line

and some of these car factories, earning a huge wage,

could well afford to send

their children to private school, if they wanted to.

At 21, we asked him what career he would pursue.

Might be at the bar.

Doing what?

Perhaps chancery practice.

I now have a career. I'm a barrister. Erm...

Other than that, life chugs along in varying degrees.

Well, in a sense, not very much has changed in my career

over the last 14 years,

I'm still a barrister, I still wear a curly white wig.

Erm, the only visible difference, I suppose,

is I wear a silk gown because I'm now a QC.

What's changed in your life since we last talked?

Seven years older, seven years fatter. A bit less hair.

I mean, nothing much, really.

I mean, you know, on a more serious level, I'm still...

A barrister, a QC.

When boys go around with girls,

they don't pay attention to what they're doing.

My grandmother had an accident

because her boyfriend was kissing his girlfriend in the street.

By 35, John had married Claire,

the daughter of a former ambassador to Bulgaria.

It is coincidental that we met, but it's obvious that

the Balkan connection was a strong mutual interest.

It is a great pleasure to welcome you all here tonight

on behalf of Friends of Bulgaria.

My mother, in fact, is from Bulgaria and that explains why for me,

Bulgaria is an especially important place.

The hounds are over there, I think.

I think the more you've had out of the country,

the more privileges you're born with, the greater your duty is.

I still feel as I did when I was 21 that it's important for

people who have had advantages to try and put as much back

and to help others less fortunate than themselves if they can.

Recently, I think this charity, Friends of Bulgaria,

is something that's very important in my life.

When we first came, the country really was on its knees.

I remember we were taking basic things, like anaesthetics,

round to hospitals, and blood supplies.

And all of that's changed.

Bulgaria's been in the EU now since, erm,

I think about 2006 and it's slowly catching up.

We're in Veliko Tarnovo, which is the medieval capital of Bulgaria.

And Friends of Bulgaria, the charity of which I'm now chairman,

we have various projects.

We are here to see how those projects are going along.

This plaque here commemorates my great-grandfather,

who's sitting in the front row.

By then, he'd already been a leader of the revolution

against the Turks in Plovdiv,

and actually, he'd been condemned to death because he was captured.

He also did an awful lot for charity.

I'm sure he keeps me up to my mark.

I do feel I'd like to continue the tradition of doing good things

to help people here, even if I don't quite have his means personally,

it's on a more modest scale.

I feel I could go on forever,

but the trouble is many of my solicitor clients

are themselves retiring

and, you know, the worry is I'll end up with no clients.

So no clients, no cases.

So as I understand it, we're going to meet three of the children who...

So what would you do when it comes time to retire?

I won't be bored.

I love travel.

We're still riding, still enjoying the English countryside.

I did have a terrible fall from a horse about two years ago

so that was dicing with death, I had a brain haemorrhage

and, erm, that was definitely unfunny.

I can still play the piano a bit. I'm not as good as I used to be.

A very nonchalant little theme. You know?

Butter wouldn't melt in its mouth.

Whether it's old age and arthritis,

or whether it's falling off horses too many times,

I don't know, but I mean, I don't feel I've got

quite the dexterity in my fingers.

Certainly I can never tell the difference between you playing

and the CD playing when I'm out of the room.

Yeah, very good. Very good.

Well, she's very diplomatic. No, no, it's true.

Are you ambitious? Yes.

What for? Well, fame.

And power.

What sort of power? Political power.

I'd quite like to go into politics, but I mean, that's, you know,

easier said than done.

I don't know why I felt like that, but I did

and maybe it's because all the Bulgarian ancestors

were all prime ministers and things like that.

But I mean, the truth is I've been a big disappointment to myself

because, erm...

I've decided not to throw my hat into the ring for politics.

And I don't have any regrets, if the truth be told.

How do you think England will change over the next few years?

Not very much.

England is too English, if you see what I mean.

People who have had things going well for them really ought to stay

and sort of help the country out when it's, you know,

things aren't going very well.

I don't believe in all this pulling one's money out.

Where do you stand on Brexit?

I don't mind saying I voted remain.

I can't say I'm a fantastically enthusiastic European

wearing my English hat.

But on the other hand,

I thought it was a leap into the dark that we didn't need to take.

I blame quite a few politicians.

I suppose I blame David Cameron

because I think the decision to hold a referendum was a mistake

and it's much too complicated a question

to submit to a simple yes or no answer.

I think it's not a bad idea to pay for schools because if we didn't,

schools would be so nasty and crowded.

The world now is very different from what it was when we were seven.

I think there were...

inequalities in British society at that stage,

which I must say I don't see any more.

'Something I did slightly object to in the programmes,

'we were shown at the age of seven'

outlining sort of the academic sort of career

that most of us did in fact pursue, you know.

It was presented as if it was just part of

some indestructible birthright that we went to all of these places

and I thought that was unfair and it didn't show us

sort of having to do beastly jobs in the holidays.

If you're talking about people from my background, I think...

life is probably more difficult for them

because there's more competition.

So many more people go to university,

no-one cares at all what background people go to.

People recruit to get the best people for the job

that they have to offer.

Sean McEnessie got three minuses in a day.

And he's a pest.

'It has to be said that I bitterly regret that

'the headmaster of the school where I was when I was seven

'pushed me forward for this series.'

Because every seven years,

a little pill of poison is injected into, erm...

I know. Well, that's, that's...

Well, it's the truth.

I'm much more down to earth as a person than I might have ended up

when I was seven.

And that was probably because, you know,

I did a year and more in the Army before going up to Oxford

and, you know, there were various things

that introduced me to the real world.

Whereas, I could have been stuck in an ivory tower.

What viewers were never told is that my father died when I was aged nine,

leaving my mother

in very uncomfortable financial circumstances.

She had to go out to work...

to see us through school and that, you know,

I got a scholarship to Oxford.

You know, I don't regard myself as particularly typical of the type

that I was no doubt selected to represent.

I mean, apart from anything else, I'm three quarters foreign,

which is an odd beginning for... well, one of the papers described me

after 21 as the archetypal Tory squire.

What's the most important thing in your life?

My wife, my family and friends.

My homes. If I'm allowed a fourth, I'd say my animals.

How do you think you've changed since you were seven?

Well, I mean, one grows so slowly that one never notices.

Any regrets about decisions you've made in your life?

No, I can't say that.

But it's not really my character,

I always try and make the best of everything,

even if it's not the best situation you're in.

Do you have any boyfriends, Suzy?

Yes.

He lives up in Scotland.

And I think he's 13.

Have you got any boyfriends, Suzy?

What is your attitude towards marriage?

Well, I don't know, I mean, I haven't given it a lot of thought

because I'm very, very cynical about it.

I was the only child going through their parents splitting up aged 14,

all at a very vulnerable age and it does cut you up.

But there's no point in them staying together for me

because it was worse, I mean, the rows, and... it's, it's worse.

When I last saw you at 21, you were nervous, you were chain-smoking,

you were uptight, and now you seem happy.

What's happened to you over these last seven years?

I suppose Rupert.

I'll give you some credit. Thank you. I'm now chain-smoking.

I'm not very children-minded at the moment

and I don't know if I ever will be.

What do you think about them? I don't like babies.

What was the biggest shocks to you

when you suddenly were confronted with a small baby?

The panic set in, I think, that I wasn't going to be able to cope.

We were lucky, we had a very good

family unit with them growing up

and that meant an awful lot to me,

that I was able to do that for them because I never had it for myself.

What do you think about making this programme?

I just think it's just ridiculous, I don't see any point in doing it.

There's a lot of baggage that gets

stirred up every seven years for me

that I find quite, that I find very hard to, to deal with.

I don't know what happened.

I was quite adamant I wasn't going to do it.

And then...

I don't know, I suppose I have this ridiculous sense of loyalty to it.

Even though I hate it.

Hello.

Suzy decided not to take part in 63 Up.

When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut,

but if I can't be an astronaut, I think I'll be a coach driver.

This is probably linked up with the fact I want to travel.

I mean, my thoughts haven't really changed.

Although I definitely wouldn't like to be a coach driver now.

Watch this.

Neil grew up in a Liverpool suburb with his friend Peter

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.

Erm... 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 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 just, that's all you can 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 seven years?

I can think of all kinds of things that I'd like to be doing.

The real question is what am I, what am I likely to be doing?

What are you likely to be doing?

That's a horrible question.

Erm... I tend to think the most likely answer is that

I'll be wandering homeless around the streets of London.

Can I just point out some of the considerable disadvantages?

Erm, 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, 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.

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."

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 really would 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 someone who's serving a lifetime jail sentence?

I'm not for an instant

under the impression that politics was always completely moral

and so obviously there have always been issues, but it's very sad that

so few people now feel that politics has any answers for them.

They don't see anything in any of the political, erm, affiliations.

Those who protest outside abortion clinics,

if they do so peacefully, are actually protesting...

'As long as I can still remember what I'm going to say

'when I stand up in council, which isn't guaranteed,

'then I'll, I'll keep doing it for a bit.'

Where do you stand on Brexit?

It's quite an unbelievable occurrence.

It's as if you're asking everybody in Britain to take poison

and say they thought it was for their good health.

So cheers!

The vote wasn't a vote to leave the European Union,

it was a vote against all politicians from whatever parties,

and against the deteriorating society we live in.

I don't think, erm, I was really taught

any sort of policy of living at all by my parents.

This is probably the biggest mistake,

that I was just left to fend myself in a world

which they seem completely oblivious of.

I mean, what's your feeling towards your parents,

both of whom I know passed away?

It's not resentment.

Er, they did their very best.

I don't say this cruelly, a problem within their own personalities,

which caused me unending difficulty.

My father, very serious, very secretive.

He could be very harsh in the punishments he gave out.

My mother, completely different, utterly superficial.

A genuine lover of the arts,

but as much of a dilettante as you could possibly imagine.

So she knew a little about everything,

but not a great deal about...

..about very much.

And did you ever have it out with your father?

Oh, many arguments, yeah.

More often than not, my father would just sit in silence.

And my mother would talk, but it was mostly to herself.

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

b-because...

they are always doing naughty things and making the whole house untidy.

Children inherit something from their parents

and even if my wife were the most, erm, high-spirited, and ordinary,

and normal of people,

the child would still stand a very fair chance of being not totally,

er, full of happiness

because what he or she will have inherited from me.

What's happened in your life in the last seven years?

Oh, that, that takes us back to, er,

when I met my current wife.

Erm, and, erm, er...

And four, four or more years of happy marriage and then, er,

an unfortunate series of occurrences, I suppose,

which means we don't see each other very often now.

How did you two meet?

Well, I was performing in the village pantomime

and she came along and watched it.

We courted in the same way that any two 20-year-olds would court.

We walked along the River Tees at Stockton.

There was a lovely restaurant down there that, erm, we used to eat in.

But we did a lot of lovely things together.

I don't for a minute regret that partnership.

I'm just sorry that for reasons I will never fully understand,

it, it, it's got to where it is.

My tendency to get in low moods was not helpful to her.

I quite understand that.

Although she was well aware of that when we got married.

I made some very... strenuous attempts to reconcile us.

We met a couple of times this year.

And I was hoping that things might improve,

but they don't seem to have done.

But as far as I'm concerned, there's time for her to, to reconsider.

Mm.

Whether that'll happen, I don't know.

Do you worry about your sanity?

Other people sometimes worry about it.

Like who? I sometimes can be found

behaving in, in, in an erratic fashion.

Erm, sometimes I get very frustrated, very angry.

Are you having any medical treatment for your mood changes?

No, I haven't for many years.

Because I wouldn't like to be dependent

upon man-made substances for a cure.

Do you ever think you are going mad?

I don't think it, I know it. Er, I, erm...

woke up with...

We're not allowed to use the word mad, but, erm...

You know. I think most people are mad here, really.

It's incredibly difficult to talk about.

Nobody wants to confess that they suffer spells of mental ill health.

Sometimes, if I'm feeling...

particularly depressed, particularly...

There are some situations in which I do want somebody to speak to me,

but there are many situations

in which actually, I want to be left alone till I am feeling better.

And I think that this is perhaps the point

my wife found it particularly hard to, erm...

Because I did say to her, say something to me

if you can see I'm depressed,

but don't keep on saying it, just leave me alone after that.

In the winter, if you lived in the country,

well, it would just be all wet

and there wouldn't be anything for miles around.

And you'd get, and you'd get soaked if you tried to go out.

And there's no shelter anywhere.

I don't see any way out. I thought of everything I possibly could.

It seemed to me for a long time that getting a reliable job,

a nice place to live would be the solution.

Well, I haven't succeeded.

Erm... I can't see any immediate future at all.

Neil still lives in Cumbria, but he's bought a house in France.

So, how long have you had the house?

Two and a half years.

My wife found it on a website for properties.

She persuaded me that it was the one that would suit me the best.

And how did this come about?

After my mother died, there was a...

..a legacy divide between my brother and I.

And some of it was able to be put towards this house.

So, tell me what this place means to you.

It's, it's just a lovely, quiet place in the country.

I've, I've lived much of my life in rural places in the past.

I think rural places have a lot of shared values, wherever you go.

People tend to look after one another better.

Communication is easier.

And you'll get good local food and country activity,

and so on, that sort of thing.

But I do miss the towns and the cities sometimes as well.

I miss London, where I lived.

I think if you're healthy and have good friends,

you can get on perfectly well.

But everybody would like to be rich.

If the state didn't give us any money...

it would probably just mean crime.

And I'm glad I don't have to steal to keep myself alive.

How do you manage for money these days?

I'm lucky in that what I earn from being a county councillor

is sufficient for my standards of living.

Bonjour.

Bonjour. Je voudrais, s'il vous plait,

acheter quelque pommes de terres et quelque pommes.

So, since I've been doing that,

I haven't needed to claim any state benefits.

And what a great relief it was not to have to do that.

So, are you frightened of getting old?

I do have concerns. I've always relied on my body very much.

Whatever else has been going on,

I've generally been in excellent physical health.

I never really seriously believed when I was a teenager

that I'd be a pensioner because it just seemed so implausible.

Despite the fact everybody who gets the chance does grow old.

I regret having reached the age I'm at,

I've had no success in the sphere I really want to be successful in.

Being a writer, my instinct

is very much about interaction with the rest of society,

which in my case just hasn't happened, it simply hasn't happened.

Yes, I'd say I believed in God. Are you religious?

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

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

I've thought an awful lot about it, actually.

And, er, 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.

Er, and that's, I think, how I've seen Him in my life.

If you haven't already been told,

the proposed pet show is unfortunately cancelled.

I'm a lay minister.

I'm licensed to carry out quite a number of functions.

That 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.

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

- and of the Holy Spirit... - Amen.

Are you still doing that work?

I've just recently been re-licensed

as a reader in the Church of England.

The title reader is really...

that of lay preacher.

I wake up every day and I don't know what's going to happen.

I don't know where I will be in a month's time, six months' time,

a year's time.

But my Christian faith helps me.

It's made a great deal of difference to my life.

I would say I've clearly experienced beneficial effects,

but... that's not what religion is about.

Everybody hopes they do get beneficial results from it,

but really, it's more about having the relationship with God.

In Christianity, that's through Jesus Christ and His teaching.

Every time this programme starts, it says,

"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."

Mm. Is that true or false?

You're probably in a... you and the audience

are probably in a better position

on the evidence that's been presented.

We don't do much fighting in school

because, because we think it's horrible and it hurts.

You get certain different types of people.

People with different sorts of brains, you know.

From the very sort of, very clever people to, you know,

people who haven't got much sense at all, really.

I wonder why I was like that.

I wonder what it was inside me that made me like that.

And I can see even at 14 then, I was beginning to get more subdued

and I was putting a lot more thought into what I was saying...

to a ridiculous degree.

I mean, you were the classic example

of it not being true. At 7 and 14...

Mm. ..everybody was in love with you.

Yeah. You were...

And now nobody speaks to me. Well, I'm sure they do.

But, you know, your own life went into a kind of freefall, somewhat.

I don't know what sort of stumbling blocks

should be put in, in a child's way

to get him used to living in the outside world.

Because I think maybe this is,

this is something that was wrong in my upbringing,

I didn't have enough obstacles to get over,

to toughen myself up against.

The change of you at 14... Mm.

..to the change of you at 21... Yeah.

..on the building site was staggering.

How can you explain that vast change?

I thought differently, I had different aspirations.

I wasn't content with a quiet, domesticised life.

I had to go out and... and seek adventure.

And it had its downside

because I hadn't really been well prepared for it in, in my childhood.

What's the happiest time you've had?

I'm just happy when something goes right

and it can be something very straightforward.

If I can get something done for somebody through my council work,

then I'm genuinely happy.

And in my church work,

if I think I'm genuinely communicating something

to people about God, then that delights me inside.

Before I ever met my wife,

I did have a very serious relationship

with an Australian girl, with who I can say truly the only person

I was ever really deeply in love with.

And I think she... she felt similarly towards me.

And she said to me eventually, she said,

"This is an impossible situation,

"not because of what we feel for each other,

"but because we live so far apart."

The idea of true love, which I do think exists, occurs so seldom.

You know, it occurs once in somebody's life,

if they're extremely lucky.

For it then to happen

and then the potential can't be fulfilled is heartbreaking.

We-e-e-e-e!

At the end of their very special day in London,

after their trip to the zoo and the party...

..we took our children to an adventure playground,

where they could do just what they liked.

Those from the children's home set about building a house.

There's Nicholas.

And Tony.

Andrew.

John.

And Bruce.

Jackie and her friends.

Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.

This has been a glimpse of Britain's future.