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 Woolwroths.

I read the Financial Times.

They talked about their dreams, their ambitions, and their fears for the future.

Everything flew out of the air.

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 56.

Lynn, Sue and Jackie grew up in London's East End and were friends at school.

With this school, we do metalwork and woodwork, and the boys do cookery.

All you girls want to do is walk out, get married, have babies, and push a pram

down the street with a fag hanging outside your mouth.

I think that we all could have gone in any way that we wanted to at the time within our capabilities.

But we only had a limited choice anyway, I mean, truth be told.

I mean, we didn't have a choice of private education because they couldn't have afforded it anyway.

Our lives are changing far too much.

All of us.

Well, to be honest.

If you look at the seven-year-old us, it's difficult to believe it is us.

I've got to say it, girls, I wanted to work in wars.

I'm glad you said that, cos everyone thinks it was me.

Sometimes we can't play nicely with the boys and sometimes we can't handle it with the boys.

I don't think I'd get married too early.

I'd like to have a full life first.

Marriage means a different thing to me.

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 was it?

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 Glenn along to watch her sing.

We've 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'm not beating any records, but it's quite a long time, isn't it?

Yeah.

Come on in.

Jessie, come on.

We're completely different people.

He's very energetic and tidy-minded, and I'm lazy and completely unenthusiastic.

You're lazy?

I am completely, 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, you know, 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 any time.

Are you on the phone, too?

When I got married, the primary reason was because I wanted to have a child.

The two, to me, went together.

Have you then thought of having your own child?

Glenn would have made a great dad, and when we first got together,

he, you know, he sort of 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.

I mean, 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's just, yeah, 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 just amaze how I got through it, you know.

What's the toughest part of it?

Probably a combination of not having enough money to do what you want and...

and being alone and being scared when things happen, when things go wrong,

which they always do when you've got kids, you know.

You've got no-one there to turn to, you know, 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 fill it around school.

So who was the biggest help to you during this whole single parent?

Oh, there was no doubt at all.

I mean, without my mum and dad, I'd never have survived it, you know.

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, isn't he?

And how are they doing now?

Yeah, they're fine.

I mean, Dad's 80 now and Mum's 78.

I think, oh, 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, you know, we do girly 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 filly, right?

That was about the only thing that I had done.

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.

You know, it was far too small.

I mean, his computer was bigger than the room, you know.

So, yeah, so he's renting.

It's just so hard for him to be able to afford something.

So in the future, your kids are going to 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 because 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 postgraduate programme.

So you like the responsibility?

Yeah, I love the responsibility.

I think I was born for the responsibility.

I'm now sort of the coordinator of the entire programme, so sort of margin charge, really, of the LLM.

It's like my baby, really.

I've, you know, 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.

You know, I get up in the morning and I don't ever think, oh, God, I can't face

going 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 because 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 doorstep?

She was not!

You don't know!

She was young!

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, you know, 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,

you know, but there's still that little nervous thing, the butterflies in your

stomach when you're waiting for the curtains to open and, you know, 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, you know.

When I get on the stage to speak to 500 students, now some people would find that

very daunting, but I actually don't because I think if you know 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 in my... 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.

You know, why look back and say, I wish I did this, or 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,

because my mum and dad are obviously still in a cancel 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'll be fine.

I don't like the big boys hitting us and a prefection.

And then it's 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, because we were a bit young.

Well, as far as I know, my mother and father got, well, they separated originally, I think.

They eventually got divorced.

I went to the boarding school for one year, and then we immigrated to Australia.

Paul settled with his father and stepmother in a suburb of Melbourne.

Do you like to get married, Paul?

Tell me why not.

I don't like them.

Say you had a wife, say you had to eat what they cooked you, and say I don't like Greens when I don't.

I know.

I prefer to be alone, really.

I can't say I don't want to get married, because I think I do.

But I want to be happily married, you know, 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.

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.

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.

All right.

I will one day.

We had our 20th wedding anniversary this last Christmas, just before Christmas.

Which is the life sentence.

Yeah.

Everyone reckons 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.

Kids here and there.

And I don't think you mean to, but you probably stopped.

Yeah.

Stopped 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.

It's hard to express emotion most of the time, although I'm getting on top of that.

More now, you know.

I mean, just a simple thing to say to sort of Susan, you know, I love you, something like that.

I mean, I can tell you about it, but I really haven't been able to say it freely to Sue, you know.

It's a bit hard to talk about.

I did end up having to get a bit of help, and it wasn't directly due to our relationship.

It started at work, unfortunately, which brought my self-esteem down.

It just 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, I just, it's there and I have to put up with it.

Yeah.

You know, I just think you take on a little bit more of each other's

personality, because whenever I was decisive and I made a decision and say,

well, look, let's do this, because, you know, Paul, not that he couldn't make

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

oh, stop asking questions, and I suppose now I start to question myself.

Well, maybe you should ask the questions.

So it is that bit of living with the other personality.

I was going to be a policeman, but I thought how hard it would be to join in.

I was going to be a phys ed teacher, but 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'm going to be a police officer.

Okay, the question was, Gracie Fields Sung, in the what in the moonlight?

It's a retirement village with independent living, and then it's got assisted living

in the hostel, which is mainly where I work.

Which has got six letters, Gracie Fields Sung.

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 gutterings,

fixes squeaky doors or doors that are broken.

Because the village is now 25 years old, so the maintenance is starting to gather.

How are you going up there, Paul?

When the job came up, I said to Susan 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.

Hi, Lola.

How are you?

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 a lot of them.

You know, if he does something and you laugh, you'll laugh with him.

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, Santa, I've already made the frog and the ponds.

Good.

So there they are for the kiddies.

Great.

And you're rich likes fairy bread.

I know.

Let's get some spiders and snakes in there.

Happy birthday dear Shana, happy birthday to you.

It's a real struggle for them.

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 pieces, and I don't know how many 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.

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 relied on each other so much.

One of the most important things we ever did with our children, was spend time with

them, and particularly when you've got holidays.

You know, go camping with them.

Well, we went over to visit Katie, because she was working up in the top end of Yorkshire on a community farm.

We were missing her.

We just don't want to tell her that.

Well, they miss you when you're away.

Do you miss them when you're away?

I didn't miss them, 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.

We're atrocious in the car.

But other than that, we're good.

Yeah, 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 Napolic Wars.

So that was all really interesting, because we work in retirement villages.

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 into 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 that it doesn't matter what you do,

there's room for all of us.

And, you know, even to the point if you don't work, you're still teaching us something.

You know, you're 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.

It's when, maybe when you try to do something physically, too quickly and pull

a muscle, that just reminds you that you're 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.

Hello, Ken.

Hello, Paul.

How are you?

Maybe where I work 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 in the back.

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, you know, getting on with life and enjoying our grandchildren,

our children and our friends, you know?

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

then once somebody stabs us, we go, ah!

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.

Get me out of here.

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.

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 love to be in politics or something like this.

At 28, we found Neil homeless, wandering around the West Coast,

if the money runs out, well, then, for a few days, there's nowhere to go to, and 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.

And what would you like to be doing, say, in seven years?

I can think of all kinds of things 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?

And that's a horrible question.

I tend to think the most likely answer is that I'll be wandering homeless around the streets of London.

I'll 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.

Thank you, Chairman.

Fairly simple.

It was a committee decision, a majority decision.

His own group on the Establishment Committee agreed with the decision.

Councillor Hughes?

Well, for Councillor Nairn's information, Councillor Cook has reconsidered the opinion he ventured at that meeting.

Here we are in the center of the board 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, to be a comparatively insignificant local amenity.

I mean, 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.

I mean, 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.

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 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 councillor.

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, we read it and it's rubbish,

actually, and 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.

That'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 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...

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 was absolutely serious.

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, um...

I don't know.

Someone who's serving a lifetime jail sentence.

I guess 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's 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 re-licensed by the Bishop of Carlow.

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.

I'm a lay minister.

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

It 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 it's been, to be able to serve the church,

to be able to serve my community, and I want to make that absolutely clear.

But, and it's true that, I think it was Albert Camus who said that 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 mean, I would have thought that was pretty obvious.

In the winter, if you lived in a country, well, it was just 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 utmost 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 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?

Um, other people sometimes worry about it.

Like who?

I... As I said, I sometimes can be found behaving in an erratic fashion.

I sometimes 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.

Um, I can't see any immediate future at all.

Although there have been times in my life when I've been suicidal, um, 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, um, ultimately.

Um...

This time round, I've been far more candid than I perhaps ever have in the past.

My formal contact with, um, the psychiatric establishment belongs mostly

to my mid and later teens and a short period of my early 20s.

But I soon, um, came to the opinion that I could help myself far better than those who were purporting to, 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 it's, if it's unwell.

So, I'm not going down the line of criticising the medical establishment.

But did, did you refuse to go into any sort of treatment?

No, I, I, I, um, I did have contact.

.

But then you discontinued it?

Yes.

Do you still think that was wise?

Yes.

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 would be quite enough for me.

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

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

I always told myself that, um, I would never have children.

Why?

Because... because... 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 stay with me.

I would stand a very fair chance of being not totally, uh, 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... I've had several, but, um...

but the fact that I'm living alone still obviously betrays the fact that none of them has.

Has endured.

Is there a reason for that?

Relationships always involve two people.

But a 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.

Can you think of a purple person with red eyes and yellow feet?

It can't really be a ghost.

Can you 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 seven, I just lived in a wonderful world where everything was all sensational and dumb.

I could be happy like this, I could be miserable like this.

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 relaxing... fast 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 and 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 relationships you can possibly have.

How it would be if we lived 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're all 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 you haven't got the opportunity to live in a thoughtful 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 who are governing us at the moment, no.

Why?

I've even stopped being amazed.

Why?

Why?

Well, I don't want to get dragged into party politics, you know, but basically

this is the most incompetent, uncaring bloody shower we've ever had.

After 28 Up, 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 there is to it.

I think I was articulating at the time what a lot of people of my age and my

background were thinking, and I was an easy target.

They're part of it, they perpetuate it.

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've experienced it yourself, you can't begin to appreciate how it feels.

So now you're back, so 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 gold rush town And what are you called?

We're called The Good Intentions.

But when he hit that bank.

I'd always played in rock bands, some of them spectacularly bad bands.

What really got me into this music was being exposed to the music of Graham Parsons.

Way back in the day, I was a big Elvis Costello fan.

I read an interview with him in which he said, I'm a good songwriter, listen to this guy, Graham 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 Carolyn Tedford said she loved me.

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

Doesn't appeal to me at all at the moment.

I mean, what, I've just gone 20.

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

There's no way I'm going to get settled down.

So, what do you want to do?

Do you just want to record?

Me and Pete to record what we're doing, and you'll work round it.

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 because he was really rude and

sarcastic to me all the time, so I thought, I think he's probably quite keen.

Oh, no, that's not true.

And you've always played together since then?

Yeah, more or less.

Yeah.

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

Nice.

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

And how are they doing?

They're great.

They're doing remarkably well.

Our son is in his first year at university.

And our daughter is coming up to her GCSEs.

Once you have your own kids, you have this huge realization of

how your own parents felt about you, and what they did for you.

What's the greatest gift a parent can give a child?

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

Their time, because I think children value that more than anything.

You're giving... Unconditionally, you're giving them your time.

Well, if I can't be an astronaut, I'd like to be a bridegroom sergeant in the police force, like my dad is.

So, are you under pressure to get a job?

Yeah, I suspect they are from the parents.

They keep dropping hints.

Teachers are undervalued and underrated.

And the whole... The system is beginning to crumble.

You know, people outside of it don't realise that, but it is.

And it's... 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 a 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 just at the end... After teaching, Peter studied law and joined the civil service.

Gabby also works there.

The civil service, despite changes currently taking place, is still comparatively a pretty decent employer.

What sort of area of the civil service are you in?

A department for work and pensions.

You've changed the key in that one.

I've changed the key to NF Sharp, sorry about that.

Oh, marvelous.

You got the MP3 or something?

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.

So, when we started work on the album we're doing now, Pete said to me,

he said, 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'm 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 old times.

Which game was that?

Which game was that?

Oh, it was the 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.

Having two children.

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, Evangeline No-one's looking for you anymore I

hesitated to say I 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 begun to become reasonably successful in terms of critical responses.

We were voted the UK's Americana Actor of the Year at the British Country Music Awards.

You know, 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 and large, you haven't

compromised too much, and that you've moved your life on the way you want your life to go.

I would like to get married when I grow up.

Well, I don't know what sort of boy, but I think one that, um... So, um...

that's not got a lot of money, but, um, has got some money, not a lot.

Jackie grew up... in London's East End.

Have you got any boyfriends?

Um...

That's personal, isn't it?

By the time she was 21, Jackie had married Mick and moved to the outskirts of London.

Haynes?

Jackie?

She and Mick had decided early on that they didn't want to have children.

Basically, I would say, because I'm far too selfish.

By 35, she was divorced.

We decided ourselves, I mean, just between the two of us, we knew it wasn't going any further.

We both knew, I think, that at the end of the day, we would be happy leading our own lives.

Oh!

And... This one on?

Here we go.

Oh, yeah.

Had a brief, but very sweet relationship.

The result of which was Charlie.

Oi, kiss her cuddle.

I don't really want Charlie to be an only.

I'd love him to have brothers and sisters.

But not necessarily loads of them, just, you know, one would do, actually.

Right, Charlie, there's yours.

Here.

Oh!

Please eat it all up.

No!

And James.

Thanks, Mum.

Good boy.

And last but not least...

Can I eat that one for me?

After her relationship with Charlie's father ended, she met Ian, and they moved to Scotland and had two sons.

James.

By 42, they had split up.

Lee.

At 49, despite the split, the family were living in the same area of Scotland.

Seven years later, they are still there.

So tell me, who lives where?

Lee will be here until October.

James is here until he moves in with his girlfriend, which I'm hoping won't be too long.

Charlie's actually already moved out because of his dad.

Or their dad, I should say.

Because Ian's been diagnosed with cancer.

And it's stage four, so it's quite...

advanced.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, he likes his grill.

You know what he's like.

The strange part about this is his mother's also got cancer as well.

You've got your grandmother?

Their grandmother.

Come on, Swans.

She's brilliant.

If I could have chosen a mother-in-law, she was the one I would have chosen.

She's great for me.

She's absolutely brilliant with the children.

And... she's just always there when I need her.

I need her to be.

She's terminal.

How long's she got?

Don't know.

Not too bad.

They don't know how long.

I think that they're talking months rather than years.

And to have mother and son suffering the same sort of thing is very difficult.

She doesn't want us to sit around and feel sorry and be sad.

She wants us to go on and live our lives.

And... It's no stop to her if we try to live her life.

It seems to have been sort of one thing after another, really.

My step-mum died, my brother-in-law died, my sisters died.

She wasn't 50.

She'd actually gone downstairs and made herself a cup of tea and collapsed on the

way back up to her bedroom, and that was a major brain haemorrhage.

So, boys, how is your mother handling all this?

In her stride.

Nothing seems to be getting to her, it's just...

She's always been a strong woman.

She won't be upset, but she won't let us see her.

She's always brave face in front of us, and then when she's alone or with her

friends, that's when she gets the sadness out.

This is a period when you feel, the three, four of you feel close.

Mm-hm.

Got to be there for each other in times like this.

Actually, I would say in the last six months, they've all suddenly seemed to have got new maturity.

My mum, cos she's got five girls, she's down with seven years' bed,

like this one, she's got five girls.

Two puff sandwiches and brown bread, one Hilton burger with cheese.

Yes, sir.

Charlie is a sous chef in a nearby hotel.

And James works part-time as a security guard in a local supermarket.

Can you check two aisles up from your current location?

I'm expecting a baby and...

I remember.

Still young, obviously, so it's a bit of a shock, but I am excited about it.

How old are you now?

19, coming on 20.

I'm looking at you.

Are you excited to be a gran?

She doesn't like being called granny.

No, I will be gran, not granny.

Thank you.

Not nappy fill now, please, madam.

Oh, look at the face.

Well, since you were here recently, we've had a new addition to the family.

Her name is Mia.

Mia was born on the 21st of November, and unfortunately, on the 18th of

November, her granddad, Ian, the boy's dad, was severely injured in a road traffic accident.

He subsequently died of those injuries.

Unfortunately, Ian never regained consciousness, so he never even met her.

But he took a photo of her in his coffin.

And I dare say he's looking down and saying, and, ha, got away with it.

I would not have got all those nights.

I'm due to go into the army on the 17th of October, where I'll then become a medic.

I mean, I can't stop him now.

He's 18, he can do what he likes.

He can sign on without my approval.

But it's a chance he takes, and he knows that there's a possibility that he won't come home.

At the end of the day, you're a soldier, and going out to war

is part of being a soldier, and that's what you've got to do.

I want you to do it, but it's not going to stop me worrying.

You know that.

You know that.

I took a year off when I had Charlie, and the state kept me for that year.

But I went back to work, and although, to be honest, by the time I pay everything

out, I'm not actually that much better off, but I feel better.

James, you what?

You're catching up to him?

Go on, Lee.

I was working up here until very recently, but then... I discovered that I've got rheumatoid arthritis.

So at the moment, that's put work on hold.

Come on in.

Missy, come on in.

For every one good day I have, I can have two bad, which means I can't get out of bed very well.

It takes me two, three hours to get ready.

The part is that you don't help them, they'll sort of die soon, won't they?

Jackie has been living on disability benefits for over 14 years.

I don't cope financially.

Without my mother-in-law stepping in to fill the gap, I wouldn't be coping.

It's really hard to explain to anyone who's not had to do it.

You get to a point where either that bill doesn't get paid or your children don't eat, so obviously your children eat.

You can go to the charity shop and get them.

So looking at the world of cutbacks, how's this affecting you?

I, along with probably my mother-in-law, and probably millions of other people in

this country, have had my benefits reviewed.

And they sent me for a medical and have come back and told me I'm fit to work,

which is a bit of a shock.

What job can I do?

I can't use my hands.

I can't sit for long.

I can't stand for long.

I can't walk very far.

I don't know how they expect anybody to employ me because I couldn't guarantee being there five days a week.

I mean, I'm lucky in as much as I've got three sons all working.

Whilst James here's got me and a family of his own, Charlie and Lee don't, so they help me out and they have to.

By all means, cut the benefits.

But you've got people out there that are healthy and are milking the system.

And they're not touching them.

They're getting away with it.

If David Cameron can find me a job, then I'll go to work.

If he can find an employer, you tell him to come and get me a job and I'll do it.

Well, I know he is her and he loves her.

I don't.

I love him.

I'd like to be at home.

I have a happy family.

Family.

I mean, I know that's not possible to be happy all the time, but as much of the time as it was possible.

Well, what about your own life?

What about relationships for you?

I would like a relationship.

I mean, I've been trying for the last five years to build up a

social life of my own because I knew that this time would come.

I've been using the Internet, which is interesting, to say the least.

Is it scary?

I mean, you know, some people have obviously had bad experiences with it.

Yes.

There was a chap that we filmed.

Yes.

When we were looking at you and Liz, what happened to him?

He decided he needed space, so I gave him that space.

So that was a bit of a disaster.

But that's the way of relationships.

Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

What are you looking for in a fellow?

Pulse would be nice.

You.

Look great.

You seem optimistic.

Yeah, no, I am.

My glass is always half full, never half empty.

And that's the way it will continue to be, I hope.

Life's too short.

And you just have to try and go on the best you can.

And I think my life's going to be good.

What sort of things do you do?

Ride, swim, play tennis, ping pong.

I might play cro coat.

Anything like that.

I don't think my father wants me to be a farmer.

My youngest brother, the deaf one, if he can't do anything else, he can probably run a farm.

I thought that you and I were both in love.

The film is being rural in the sense that your family had some big connections to sort of rural Scotland, I thought.

And I think also when we were 21, I seem to remember having to go to some reunion or something somewhere.

And I remember you just stuck out as being the one person that I had more in common with and spoke to the most.

Oh, well, I played for the same four girls.

We'd been emailing each other since 40-something.

It was one night, it was just, I think it was quite late, and I just

threw a line at Nick before I said, I'm going to bed now.

I said, perhaps you and I ought to do a double act on the sofa.

And I went to bed.

I'm not sure.

Hang on.

I mean.

And you wrote back some funny message that I picked up the next morning.

Well, no wonder.

I was.

I would, wouldn't I?

When I leave this school, I'm down for Heathfield and Southover Manor.

And then maybe I may want to go to a university, but I don't know which one yet.

My home life wasn't very easy then.

I'd been sent off to boarding school when I was quite young.

My parents' marriage was breaking up.

And like a lot of children, I think you feel that you take the blame for why they've broken up.

That's just the way it is.

That's the way it was, and I hated the two years I was away at this first boarding school.

And I think that was probably what changed me.

Well, I hated boarding school, too, with a passion.

I was forced to grow.

I didn't choose it.

I definitely got some messages that said, you're going to be in trouble if you don't do well and so on.

But you don't regret it?

No, no, no, no.

You wouldn't have the life you have now?

Hey, I'm grateful for it.

But it was very uncomfortable.

I was never one to push myself forward.

And nobody else was pushing.

And no one else pushed me.

I left school when I was 16, went to Paris, went to secretarial college and got a job.

What made you decide to leave school and go to Paris?

I just wasn't interested in school and just wanted to get away.

If you'd had no choice but to get out there and support yourself, the chances

would have been greater that you would have forced yourself to do it.

Yeah, that's possibly true, but at the age of 11, 12, 13, are you really aware of that?

Now, that's a very telling question.

In my world, you betcha.

When I grow up, I like to find out all about the moon and all that.

And I said I was interested in physics and chemistry.

Well, I'm not going to do that here.

At 14, Nick was away at boarding school.

At 21, reading physics at Oxford.

His road to Oxford started in a one-room village school.

My father was here, yeah, a long time ago.

He must be somewhere on these pictures.

I remember distinctly coming here one day, and I'd missed a day for some reason,

and they'd been talking about something to do with aeroplanes.

And the teacher said, we missed you because you would have known about aeroplanes.

I knew nothing about aeroplanes.

But I thought, oh, I know about aeroplanes, do I?

So then I went off and read about aeroplanes, you know, so that could easily

have been the start of I want to go to moon, you know.

I think she planted that idea in me.

Do you have a girlfriend?

I don't want to answer that.

I don't want to answer those kind of questions.

I thought that one would come up, because when I was...

When I was doing the other one, somebody said, what do you think about girls?

And I said, I don't answer questions like that.

Is that the reason you're asking it?

The best answer would be to say that I don't answer questions like that,

but, you know, it was what I said when I was seven, and it's still the most sensible, but, I mean, what about them?

I mean, if you'd been somebody who had had fixed ideas of a woman's role in marriage

that meant dinner on the table or at six every evening... Ah, didn't I tell you about that?

By 28, Nick had married Jackie, a fellow student from Oxford.

They had a son, Adam.

By 42, they were divorced.

What I concluded, and I've talked to other people about this who've gone through it,

I'm not sure if they feel it as strongly as I did, but it was like a death.

Anything could happen.

It could easily drift apart.

There are so many pressures on people.

If your spouse died, you could look back and think, well, it was wonderful while it lasted.

But in a divorce, you can't look back and say, these are all happy memories.

Hey, Chris!

Chris is my new wife.

I'm OK.

I don't mean to be superficial, but I think she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

Is he sexy?

Oh, man.

Absolutely.

Didn't you have fun with that one?

I always need to learn Patience, and what do I need to learn?

Shall I get out my list?

Yeah, I think we need the list.

Go on.

Tell me, do you have any boyfriends, Suzy?

Um, yes.

Tell me about them.

He lives up in Scotland.

And I think he's 13.

Have you got any boyfriends, Suzy?

What is your attitude towards marriage for yourself?

Well, I don't know.

I haven't given it a lot of thought, because I'm very, very cynical about it.

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.

I'm now chain-smoking.

I think, you know, you can't just walk through a marriage and think it's,

you know, once you get married, it's all going to be roses and everything forever.

It's very hard to actually say what it is that goes on between a couple.

It's either there or it's not.

Any marriage has its ups and downs.

But somehow, whether it's through luck or determination, we've worked through them, the difficult times.

One of my favourite places in Oxford, Merton Chapel, here's this lovely top part

of the cross, and there was going to be the main part of the cross.

This is one of the places in England that just is tremendously important.

After I left the Dales, you know, this was where I spent the next six years, and then I went to America.

Look at this, isn't this beautiful?

This is mob quad.

I believe that it's historical fact that there were quite a lot of students were

massacred in the Middle Ages, and for when I came here, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

But I was under an awful lot of stress all the time I was here, trying to succeed in this place as well.

Okay, yes, so this was my staircase in my first year and also on my third year.

There was this fellow who lived in the room next door to me, and he came in one day to tell me some story.

And on his way out, he said, you know, I don't associate intelligence with your accent.

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.

What, you know, what success?

By the time he was 28, Nick had emigrated to America.

He was doing research into nuclear fusion at the University of Wisconsin.

Tell me about the current drive.

If you'd been offered a similar type of job over here, that... In a heartbeat.

You would have stayed?

In a heartbeat.

I mean, I had dreamed of getting a university job over here.

Maggie Thatcher was squeezing the universities like crazy at that very

moment in time and, you know, and it was the worst time to be working in a university in generations.

England doesn't seem to concern itself with training people like me and wanting them around.

There doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency or a strong will to have people

developing technology to help keep the country going.

The fusion reaction gives off energy and produces the power that would be turned into electrical...

I was on a mission, you know, to get extremely cheap, clean, plentiful electricity.

So nuclear fusion looked like it was going to do that.

But even then, they were saying, it's 20 years away.

I would say, absolutely not in my lifetime.

I mean, it was kind of heartbreaking.

So I had to find something else to do.

So the area that I'm looking at is this times this.

When I go into a classroom full of undergraduates, I try and explain to them why they might want to try and do it.

That's my little attempt to open a little door for them.

Nick is a professor of electrical engineering.

My ambition as a scientist is to be more famous for doing science than for being in this film.

But unfortunately, Michael, it's not going to happen.

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

I'm not very children-minded at the moment.

I don't know if I ever will be.

What do you think about them?

I don't like babies.

At 28, Suzy had two sons, Thomas and Oliver.

By the time she was 35, she also had a daughter, Laura.

Mummy, Laura wants him.

We were lucky.

We had a very good family relationship.

We had a very good 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.

And you've done it.

You've been tremendously successful at it.

Well, see, that's my problem.

I don't think of myself as being a... I just do my best and do what I can for them.

Did all your children go to university?

Your daughter did?

Yes, and my son, the eldest one.

I haven't had a successful career, no.

But I do feel fulfilled in them and I've done quite a lot of different things over the last seven years.

You know, we all make mistakes in everything, from parenting to decisions in life.

You make mistakes and that's how you become the person you are.

You can talk to me by myself outside, but I'll just meet you by the garage,

OK?

All right.

All right, bye.

Nick's son, Adam, was ten when his parents divorced.

When he was first told, he was terribly, terribly upset.

And then he just pulled himself together and didn't want to talk about it anymore.

Take it easy, Adam.

The main thing is not to crash.

Really?

You don't want me to crash right now?

How's your deal with it now?

He doesn't talk to me about it very much.

At all.

He's a private person.

He's getting more mature, and he has to be very patient with me, really.

Can you imagine having me for a dad?

Do you think it would be a low-pressure existence?

Wow, this is my little school.

I'm nuts, and I would drive a kid nuts with all my nagging.

I mean, I try... Do you think you've pushed him too far, which is why he's now backing away?

Anything I push him to do, he's going to do the opposite.

So... So there's a real, you know... They like to come out for a holiday in the country when we like...

when I like to have a holiday in the town.

It's a fixed reference point in a sense, the sort of earthy life-and-death cycle that you get living on a farm.

So when something dies, it rots and feeds back into the earth.

He has a density to him.

One of the first things he said to me is, my feet are in the mud.

The whole idea of being deep in the mud and very attached to a foundation makes good sense to me.

Nick has two younger brothers, Andrew and Christopher.

I come up for most weekends, and then Chris gets up usually in midweek,

so he helps with shopping and stuff like that.

We don't get over to England very often, and so you can count on one hand how many

times you're going to see your family before somebody dies.

And that's getting more and more pressing every time we come.

You know, it's so...

Yeah, this is... this is... this is tricky.

How are they doing?

Not well.

They're very old.

Yeah, I don't really want to elaborate on that.

I don't...

I don't... But it's full of emotion, all this.

It's all the stuff that we repress as hard as we can, isn't it?

But, um...

Yeah, it really is.

I'm looking at these names and who they all are, but this, of course, is Granny Hitchin and Grandpa Hitchin.

When I was a little guy, I got up at the crack of dawn and scooted next door to spend the morning with her.

So, yes, when she died when I was five or six, I think.

So I think I was devastated.

Yeah.

Do you still remember her?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know you should let these things out, and I don't.

I store them up.

But I can't... That's the character of me now, and I can't change it.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you, yes.

Nick is truly English.

I mean, my father is English, and I was probably in my late 20s, maybe early 30s,

before I uttered the words I love you to either one of my parents.

There is a difference, a distinct difference between the type of English person he is and the type of...

American people I've been with, so I don't...

You may know the difference, too, Michael, because you've been in both settings.

What do you think about making this programme?

I just think it's just ridiculous.

I don't see any point in doing it.

Why is it that we are so annoyed about this programme?

I think the problem I have is that you don't get a very rounded picture.

You get the odd comment that comes, that comes out on a particular topic,

but because of the time restraint that this programme obviously has, otherwise

we'd be on for a couple of months if you were trying to get everybody's real thoughts on things.

It's just that the limitations of such things as what the audience requires and

the time don't allow it to be a real study.

I think I'd like to say this and I'd like to say that, and then they film me sort of

doing all this daft stuff, and it goes on, you know, seven days out of every seven

years, it's sort of biblical something or other, and, you know, it's all this

excitement and so on, and then they present this tiny little snippet of your

life and it's like, that's all there is to me?

When I go home, I go and see my mother, and I have tea and watch TV.

And then I do my homework and I go and see my father.

Were they, in the 60s, trying to say that the fact that I'd supposedly had a more

privileged upbringing, that I should have been the one who'd become the high flyer

and that you, you having come from, I mean, I just think that's so wrong,

but is that what they were trying to get at?

The idea of looking at a bunch of people over time and how they evolve,

that was a really nifty idea.

It isn't a picture really of the essence of Nick or Suzy, it's a picture of every man.

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

You know, just seeing me this age and the next age with more wrinkles and more...

I think we have all got a few of those.

Oops!

Oops!

Just, it's not an absolute accurate picture of me, but it's a picture of somebody.

And that's the value of it.

But then we're putting ourselves out to be that person.

Well, I didn't want to do it when I was 14.

I know I was very difficult because I was very anti-doing it.

I was pressurised into doing it by my parents.

And I hated it.

And I vowed I'd never do it now.

But here I am.

I mean, who knows in seven years what, whether it'll be done again.

But this is me saying, hopefully I'll reach my half century next year and I shall bow out.

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.

And that's just such a contradiction, isn't it?

But...

And also, I think...

It's like... It's like reading a bad book.

I'll still read it.

I'll still see it through.

And I guess I'll put this down to being a bad book, but I'll see it through.

Simon was brought up in a children's home, the only child of a single parent.

They say, where's your father, then?

You know, when your mum's out at work, they say, your father?

And I just tell them, I ain't got one.

See, I can get on well with my mother sometimes.

We talk very well with each other, but it's sometimes not quite as mother and son, sort of more like friends.

When he was 35, Simon's mother died of cancer.

There were so many things I never actually said to my mum.

Just things that, you know, you think about afterwards, it's too late because they're not there anymore.

What sort of things?

Just, I love you every day, you know.

When I was born, you know, an illegitimate child, you know, that's something somebody 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 whether you stay with somebody or you leave them.

Since 21, I've got married, had a couple of kids, and...

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

They've got everything, then.

They've even got what I never had.

Which is what?

A father, isn't it?

So, I mean... They've had everything.

By 35, they were divorced.

At one stage, they would stop seeing me at all.

But now, a bit older, a bit wiser, and I'm a bit older and wiser,

and now three of them see me.

At 42, he married Vianessa.

Vianessa.

We used to go out when we were younger.

We met in the laundrette.

Once a week.

Once a week in the laundrette.

Vianessa already had a daughter, Miriam, and she and Symon had a son, Daniel.

Is there anything of you in him?

He's dashing good looks, yeah.

That's me.

And his love of sport as well.

What's your favourite sport?

Well, today's Daniel's big, big day.

He's now 18, and he's a young man, he says, and he's done very, very well with his schooling and everything.

At the beginning of the week, I received an email saying that I got onto my

apprenticeship with Procter & Gamble, which I'm very, very excited about,

and I start that in the next couple of weeks.

All I want to say is that I have had the proudest week of my life.

With my son passing his exams, he's passed his test, and if money runs through it, he might get a car.

Yeah!

Yeah!

Yeah!

But here, people are undecided about you.

They can be your friend one day and not the next.

Obviously, when children come into foster care, family and friends are involved as

well, and we have to ensure that the children are kept safe and secure.

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

Went to boarding school when I was young, and I always felt that that was regimental.

It didn't allow for personal care.

It didn't allow for personal care.

I'm from the adult carers, so I wanted to do something like that for myself,

you know, in my own home.

And we always say to foster carers, please do not cut the children's hair without the permission of the parents.

So what's the toughest thing about being a foster parent?

You're taking a chance when you do it, because you really don't know what you're getting.

It's something that all children want.

It's to be loved.

It's to be wanted.

So if you can give that to them, then everything else is second.

Do you know why Uncle Sam looks younger?

Because he's so laid back.

Some of them come back.

They ring you up and say, hello, auntie, hello, uncle.

How are you?

They come and have Sunday dinner, come and visit us, which is good.

I once tried to count, and I got up to 65, and I stopped.

Because if you know that you're going to get 50p for an empty can of coke.

She's like a mother to me.

She's always been there.

There was a time where I felt like I want to give up in everything.

And she kept saying to me, like, you have to keep on going, like, you have to keep on trying.

I'm getting emotional.

Sorry.

When I came through the airport and that, like, my family wasn't at the airport to collect me and that.

So, you know, I just had to stay somewhere for, like, a temporary base.

I was here for about, I think, five to six years.

I couldn't ask for anything better, to be honest.

Yeah, they were really nice.

Very nice.

Very nice.

Were you looked after at some point?

My real mother died at birth, and my dad remarried, and my mother is the person I

am, who made me the person I am today, because she was always helping other young people.

And she used to always say to us, don't be jealous, because you've got my

love, but they've got no one to love them, you know?

As well as fostering, Vionetta also works for an organization.

It takes homeless young people off the streets.

And what happens to the fostering children when you're here four days?

Some might balance them together.

We juggle.

Simon sometimes works late, and I rush home.

He'll do the school run in the morning.

I'll do the school run in the afternoon.

But my job is very flexible.

So you have an incredibly busy life, don't you?

Very busy.

I'm a very busy person.

I'm a very busy person.

We were starting to feel that we were getting sort of tense and tight,

you know, and that normally means you need a holiday, because we found ourselves doing too much.

So at some stage, you've got to chill out.

Simon took the family to Portugal.

Oh, look at this.

That's nice.

That's quite... What do you think?

That's blingy.

That's really nice.

So Jess is, oh, your first marriage, and Minnie's your second.

Yes.

But your marriage.

Mm-mm.

And the relationship's strong.

They know each other from being young.

Mm.

They did things together, went out together.

So they're not like strangers.

Before I'm old enough to get a job, I just walk around and see what I can find.

Was going to be a film star, but now I'm going to be an electrical engineer,

which is more to reality.

Yeah.

By 21, Symon was working in the freezer room of Walled Sausages in London.

I know I can't stay at Walled's forever.

I mean, it's just not me.

I couldn't stay there for that long.

My mind would go dead.

And you never feared you should be doing better jobs in these?

Aren't you worth more than this?

No, I haven't really.

I suppose it's just like hard work.

I don't know.

The factory closed down.

Since then, he has worked near Heathrow Airport handling freight.

If I'd pushed myself at school, probably I could have done a lot better.

Does that give you pause for thought?

No, that means I was a lazy sod when I was younger.

If we'd got together when we should have got together, there's no way he'd have been a forklift driver.

Not where I'm with, no way.

Not with all that brains.

I've got common sense and he's got the brains.

I am the proof that you need to push yourself and go.

If you want to get on, if you want things in life, you have to push yourself to keep going.

I should have been an accountant.

But I went in this office, I looked at this grey, grubby office and the people

there looked grey, suited and miserable and I thought, this isn't for me.

I'll stay out in the fresh air.

I don't want this.

Years later, I realised that not every office is like that.

Some offices are vibrant and moving.

But it was too late then.

I'd already sort of stagnated myself driving forklifts and working in a warehouse.

You could have made a lot of money being an accountant.

Yes, I could have.

She looks after me.

She doesn't just push me, she looks after me, you know.

She would never let anything be wrong for me.

Great beans.

Thank you.

Go and get the waterbed now.

One stage, we went to marriage guidance because the pressures of marriage and

being together were getting to us because we are two completely different people.

I'm very laid back.

She always says if I go any further back, I'll fall over.

Is the chemistry still there between you?

Yeah, I hope so.

Is it?

Yes, darling.

Yeah, the chemistry's still there.

Yeah.

They were saying that, what, nearly 20 years?

Is that all it is?

Yeah.

Oh, come on, Simon, hurry up.

Catch up.

Come on, Jason, Daniel.

Do you think you could ever retire and ever just chill out?

There's people who I've noticed, they stop work and they have no other interests.

They suddenly get old.

Yeah, so you're old.

You've got a few bulges, a few wrinkles.

But life still goes on.

Enjoy life.

So who won?

I came here first.

I think that was me.

Yeah, exactly.

Beautiful.

This is definitely a better track.

Did I win and just allow you to come?

No, no.

Dad, you was like the person that comes around on the tractor.

I think I admire people with great determination, you know, like people who just come up from nothing.

They build up their lives.

They build up their life from absolutely nothing.

Well, do you see some parts of life as success and some parts of failure,

or do you not think like that?

You know, you don't stop life because you've made a mistake.

If you go down the wrong road, it doesn't mean that's the end of the road for you.

There's no chance you have to turn around and come back.

Start again, isn't it?

Do a U-turn.

And to be honest, what do you think about our life?

I think there's been more ups than downs.

Yeah.

And hopefully there's a lot more ups to come.

Yeah.

Well, my girlfriend is in Africa and I don't think I'll have another chance of seeing her again.

Have you got any girlfriends?

No.

No, not yet.

I'm sure it will come.

But not yet.

I mean, I do think a lot of people think too much about it.

I think I would very much... like to...

become involved in a family, my own family, for a start.

That's a need that I feel I ought to fulfill and would like to fulfill and would do it well.

Yes, I haven't got married or whatever.

And I suppose, you know, that would have been something which I hoped had happened.

Well, you're getting on a bit.

You're getting worried.

Well, not particularly.

I mean, I'm always optimistic.

I mean, who knows who I might meet tomorrow?

And in the middle of a conversation about something completely different,

he just asked if I'd like to marry him.

And if I hadn't been listening carefully, I would have missed it completely.

To love and to Cherish.

To love and to Cherish.

Till death us do part.

Till death us do part.

Don't argue very much.

Not really.

I mean, we haven't really had a sort of full-blown row.

Our arguments sort of tend to be two sentences.

And I go off and solve for 24 hours.

So is Bruce getting any better at expressing his feelings to you?

Um...

Not really, by the sound of that.

We may have children.

I don't know.

I mean, if in seven years' time or so we're living in a slightly bigger house with a young family, that would be nice.

I mean, I don't want to pin all my hopes on it and nothing happens.

We are quite old.

I can see bringing up, say, teenage children in your 50s might be a bit strange.

Come on in, Henry.

Get on.

Bruce and Penny had two sons, Henry and George.

I'm 30.

I mean, seven years ago, you were taking a bit of a pasting from them.

Well, yes, exactly, and that's... You know, if they sat on me now, I wouldn't be able to get up again.

And in the second year, I was in the rooms at the top of that staircase there.

Bruce and Penny took the boys away for a weekend to Oxford to see Bruce's old

college and to watch their father play cricket.

It's just nice drifting along the river without making too much noise.

You know, if you can see the old wildlife and so on, you come up on it unawares.

Muddy water and a spider.

Charles.

One of you link up one.

I think it's more of a father-son thing to go along and watch and support.

We always have lunch, then tea, and then a barbecue afterwards.

We're not very good at this, are we?

Ever since Cornwall, it was to be no more campings.

My heart's desire is to see my daddy, who's 6,000 miles away.

What happened between you and your dad?

I suppose a separation.

And the distance.

When I was 14, I went out to Zimbabwe.

And then later, when he retired to England, we felt that there was a lot of distance between us and ground to make up.

I think it's going to take quite a while.

The boys are still young enough for us all three to fit into a small tent.

I suppose it's a bit of dads and lads and getting to know each other and forming a relationship and so on.

How long do you want to wait?

Oh, Lord, that's not going to go anywhere.

OK, boys.

They always come first.

I mean, we've got our work and so on, so we'll do a variety of things with them.

We'll do it later, then.

I'm off to play cricket.

Bye-bye.

Is the forecast to rain tonight?

We're riding on your toes, you go sideways.

Commence.

When he was seven, Bruce was at boarding school Go on home!

He went on to Oxford, where he got a maths degree.

You can show that this is irreducible.

Then you do a transformation on this polynomial, x equal to t plus two.

After Oxford, he worked in the city for a year, then decided to teach.

He taught in a state school.

General education is better for society, I think.

There is a class society.

And I think private schools may help its continuance.

At 35, Bruce took a sabbatical and taught in Bangladesh.

At 42, he was back in the East End, as head of the maths department at a girls' comprehensive school.

At 49, we found him teaching at St Albans, an independent school.

In the early days, the school was in the Abbey, going back to 948.

948?

Yes, so the head quite likes to say, we're in our third millennium, you know.

So the school's over 1,000 years old?

Yes, in one form or another.

Now, you have to make X a subject to this equation.

You've got to get X on its own.

So what's the first thing we do?

I multiply both sides by... Has it been a kind of compromise of political principles for you, this?

Well, I would say, you know, have a million angels in front of every teacher

who's prepared to slog away to an inner-city comprehensive.

Make way, make way.

This is somebody who's prepared to turn up each day and do that job.

Do your old friends give you a hard time about what you've done?

They certainly do.

They absolutely do.

They say, oh, you know, have we joined the Tory party, the golf club, the Masons?

You know.

I'm quite happy just being an ordinary maths teacher for not many years that I've got left, actually.

So I'm quite happy I'm not ambitious now.

Yep, face it up.

So do you enjoy watching cricket?

I can watch it for short periods.

It's a sort of a sport tax on Bruce.

He plays cricket, I go and shop.

So is he playing as much Bruce as he used to?

No.

No.

And when he does, he usually runs to pull a muscle.

But they lost by about 70 runs and our team lost by about 70 runs.

At the end of the game, somebody is nominated to wear that ridiculous garment.

And I think bringing you lot along for the weekend had a lot to do with me winning the jacket this time.

So the jacket is not an enviable thing to wear?

No, no.

Well, I'll go into Africa and try and teach people who are not civilised to be more or less good.

It all Springs from...

loving God and Christ, I suppose.

Some people often will say that the bully is upset about something in their own lives and so when they're bullying...

I suppose.

They end up taking them to Quakers so that they learn the

Christian stories and a lot of what's embedded in our culture.

They are good moral tales which, when they reflect upon, you know,

they may give them a sense of right and wrong and so on.

We like the ethos of tolerance and understanding.

The boys go to a local Quaker school where Penny teaches.

Everybody in the school from the youngest two-and-a-half-year-old in the nursery to

the headmaster is known by their first names and there is no uniform and very few formal rules.

Are you ambitious for them?

Yeah, I mean, some people work ferociously hard and while that's rewarding and they

enjoy that and they enjoy the success and so on, you just hope they get a nice balance to their lives.

What are your fears for the future with the boys?

That they don't fulfill their potential, that they're led astray in some way, drugs or something.

They end up unhappy with regrets about not having done as well as they could.

Right, what a night we're going to have here.

Right, if I wake up to find anybody clutching my genitals...

George!

They're very good company, but they will grow apart, you know, eventually leave home and we won't see them so often.

And in a way, I'll miss them dreadfully, but that's the natural order of things.

And just think how comfortable Mummy is in her bed and breakfast.

But just remember, when we're in a tent, the Balden family are a non-farting family.

Frankie, Father.

Dad, shut up.

I'm going to work in Woolworths.

Lynn grew up in the East End of London.

Why am I using wooden spoon, please, to stir this saucepan?

Well, in a grammar school, I don't think you find many girls that really want to do metalwork or woodwork.

At 21, she began a career as a children's librarian, starting off in a mobile library in East London.

Can I stamp yours?

Yes.

Can I stamp yours?

Sleep in beauty.

Teaching children the beauty of books is just fantastic.

To work with children of that age, you've got to love them, and I love children.

Because of cuts in the education budget, the mobile library was shut down.

At 42, Lynn was working at Bethnal Green.

You can draw better than I can.

Good morning.

When we went back at 49, she was still there.

What about you?

Good morning.

For the last 30 years, I've banged my head against a brick wall to maintain

children's services, but this time around, no-one's listening.

They say that the work that I do, that anybody can do it.

There would be no specialist running it.

I may not have a job.

At that library review, I got a job.

Two years later, another review.

And cutting departments again.

That time, I didn't get a job.

But has it been worth it all?

Yeah, very much.

All these things that I've said over the years are flying

through my mind at the moment, but, yes, it has been worth it.

And you'd better cut it, cos otherwise I'm going to cry.

Fortunately, I was over 50 and I could draw my pension.

We decided we can downsize, we'll move out, smaller property,

there's only the two of us at home now, and we'd be great.

Then the crash came.

And then Riley was born.

And what I thought was stress was nothing.

Riley is one of Lynn's three grandsons.

How much did he weigh when he was born?

Two pounds and a quarter ounce.

As soon as he was born, they took him straight through to the neonatal intensive care unit.

Three?

How many you got?

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was put on oxygen.

The monitor's on.

Tubes coming out of everywhere.

And he's absolutely fine, thanks to the nickel unit at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.

Nice work, darling.

Mummy's going to work.

Say bye-bye, Mummy.

Riley has an older brother, Connor.

For the last 18 months or so, I've actually had Riley full time.

If I could, I would have two girls and two boys.

I've been married a year and a couple of months.

You do think, Christ, what have I done?

When she was 19, she married Ross.

They had two daughters, Sarah and Emma.

I'm very much geared to the family unit.

I mean, us all.

We do things.

Together all the time.

At 42, the girls were both doing very well at school.

All right, darling?

Yeah.

Neither of the girls went to university?

No.

Was that disappointing to you?

No.

Their choice.

We discussed it.

It's what they wanted to do.

They felt that the academic side wasn't for them.

Sorry.

So was the arrival of Conor a shock to you?

No.

Well, yeah.

But she was 19, you know.

She's old enough.

Oh, look, he's coming after you.

Look, he's coming over here.

Do you see?

And how's old Conor doing?

He's doing great.

He's off to his new secondary school.

He keeps telling me he's nearly as tall as me, but I keep saying, no, you've got a while to go yet.

How does he deal with Riley?

He loves Riley to bits.

But...

Riley is just a two-year-old.

Sarah and Adam have got married since we last saw you.

They've got a little boy called Harry.

He's getting on fine.

Sarah, having just had Harry, was put in the same boat as I was.

The day before, she was due to go back to work after maternity leave.

Made redundant.

Yeah, so there used to be a lot more subspecies, but for various reasons,

they've gone extinct.

And she's now... trained as a childminder.

She's doing absolutely brilliantly.

Wow!

And is Emma still in the same job?

Yeah.

Is that going OK?

I mean, with the recession, work dropped off an awful lot, but it seems to be picking up again now.

Can't go over, though.

So, Ross took early retirement too, so what's happened with him?

Because of the crash, he picked up a job, and instead of the two-part job, the full-time job, he got a full-time job.

So, we are looking at a much longer working life than perhaps we thought.

Yeah, for everyone.

The goalposts keep hiring.

People that thought when they started work that they were going to retire at 60,

draw their state pension as well, it's totally changed.

They come round and mop the floor, and then a couple of minutes later, another waitress comes round.

I'm not politically minded, but I still believe that they haven't got a clue what they're doing.

Some people are never, ever going to recover from it.

It's unfortunately going to be quite devastating for them.

We've no left-wing Labour Party any more.

Tony Blair saw to that.

They all veer to the right.

I didn't know I was getting into this.

Are you all right?

Yeah, I think so.

This is unbelievable.

Look, look up.

Russ is still such a great support for me, and he is still my soul mate.

Take care.

I love you.

After all this time...

we've flourished together.

I had an all-white wedding, all white.

We were both in white and my bridesmaid was in white.

37 years.

Gone extremely quickly.

We've just grown together.

We learnt to be friends before we had children.

We established a solid foundation from which to work from.

Think of how fit he's going to make you.

So, for you, that's... I'm happy with the way my life has gone.

I'm still a governor.

I'm still chair of governors at St Xavier.

I've just been appointed for another four-year term of office from the London Diocese and Boulder Schools.

Must be doing something right.

I read the Financial Times.

I read the Observer and the Times.

What do you like about it?

Well, I like... I usually look at the headlines and then read about them.

About it?

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 Cambridge and Trinity Hall.

John went to Westminster, then on to read law at Christchurch, Oxford.

I'm thinking of following a legal career with a view to ending in Parliament.

I might be at the bar.

Doing what?

Perhaps chancery practice.

I now have a career.

I'm a barrister.

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.

The only visible difference, I suppose, is I wear a silk gown, because I'm now a QC.

So week after next is ideal, except for Monday.

I do largely litigation.

I enjoy the work, which is intellectually stimulating and always interesting.

I'm blessed with an exceptionally nice group of people in these chambers who I really get on with.

I've been ushers at many members of chambers' weddings.

I've been godfather to at least three chambers' children.

It's a really nice, close set of friends here, and I think I'm very blessed in my work environment.

I'm going to Charter House, and after that, Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Andrew went to Charter House and Cambridge, where he read law.

I'd like to be a solicitor, and also fairly successful.

At 28, Andrew was a solicitor.

By 35, he'd become a partner.

Later, he joined the legal department of a large British industrial company.

A few years after, they were taken over by a German firm.

There was a bit of uncertainty when you get two large organisations coming

together, you know, who is going to have a job at the end of it, who is going to be made redundant.

I was fortunate enough that I still had a job at the end of it and it's worked very well.

When boys go round with girls, they don't pay attention to what they're doing.

For instance, my grandmother had an accident because a 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.

My great-great-grandfather, who was the first prime minister of Bulgaria when the

country was liberated from the Turks in 1879.

Well, I think everyone needs to have a feeling that they belong somewhere,

that there's a plot of land or somewhere where they hail from and their roots are.

People who don't know how to go on about the government butchering the National.

Health Service, I think, should come over to Bulgaria to see what being kept short

of necessary supplies and funds really does mean.

We're at the Centre for the Rehabilitation of Disabled Children at Dalbuk Dol near Trajan in the Balkan Mountains.

Which our charity in London has helped quite a bit.

We feel we can help in all sorts of smaller ways, particularly with art classes or pottery classes or dancing classes.

You can revolutionise the life of a child without actually having to raise huge sums of money.

What do you think about girlfriends at your age?

I've got one, but I don't think much of her.

They're no longer just bores who won't play this or something.

They're on behalf of the community and they're there.

And you can begin to talk to them.

I don't think I financially come from the same family.

Andrew didn't go for a haughty Deb.

He went for a good Yorkshire lass.

Does money concern you a lot?

No, I think as long as one has enough to be comfortable, that's really what one should aim for.

What's the most difficult thing about keeping the marriage together?

I don't think it is particularly difficult, actually.

We seem to manage all right, would you say?

I think so.

We talk, don't we?

So how is married life?

Well, I'd still love him, if that's what you're asking.

Likewise.

I think the most important thing to us, apart from our marriage, is our children.

So we look at them and we see that they seem to be happy and getting on well.

We're pleased to be sitting here after how many years it is, 28 years, still happily together.

Andrew and Jane have two sons, Alexander and Timothy.

And you can never be sure of leaving your children in any worldly goods,

but at least you can be sure that once you've given them a good education,

that's something that no one can take away.

Alexander's now working in Canary Wharf in the City of London.

And Timothy's just left St Andrews, graduated this year, and he's going on to

do a postgraduate degree at Durham University.

I'd quite like to go into politics, but, I mean, that's easier said than done.

Who knows?

I haven't written myself off as a potential politician, even though I'm already 49.

Well, I've always wanted to go into politics, but whether I'll ever do anything about it, I'm afraid I'm too old now.

That's the truth.

But it's depressing, my two eldest friends are both ministers at the moment,

and one I've known since four, one I've known since five, and,

I mean, obviously, one can't help feeling one's a bit of a failure by comparison.

I think it's more fair if they're elected.

Yes, so do I, but I think it's best to be appointed.

Yes, because it takes a lot of time.

It doesn't... Appointed.

I'm pleased that we have a coalition, because I've always at heart believed in capitalism, and consensus politics.

One thing that really does worry me is their attempts to solve economic

stagnation at the moment in this country by building all over the Greenbelt and other areas of countryside.

I have no doubt that whether it's five years or ten years, this recession is

going to be over one day, but if the countryside is ruined, it's ruined

forever, and for our children, our children's children, and so on.

Andrew and Jane live in London, but they have a second home in the country.

Well, we bought it about just when we got married.

It was a 200-year-old barn that we bought in an auction.

Completely derelict, nothing in it at all except for manure.

We've been here now 28 years.

Time's gone by, but things obviously got more mature over the years.

So is it done?

It's never done.

There is always the problem of weeds.

As a couple, are you concerned by the destruction of the environment?

I'm very interested about it.

And I think what worries me is that we have the opportunity now to save animals,

flora and fauna, that will be lost, and we don't know what benefit they will be to us.

I think a lot of people say, well, global warming's bad, but are they actually prepared to do anything about it?

I'm not sure about that.

The company I work for is developing hydrogen-powered fuel cells for cars in the future.

It's still some way off, but I think that's the way that cars will go.

There must be times, you know, when you look and think, well,

I did well with this, or I should have done that differently.

Well, I think when there are sort of events in your life, like when,

for example, Timothy graduated recently, and we thought, well, that's quite nice.

You know, here he is.

This is the next stage of his life.

You know, he's done quite well to get there and he seems well-balanced.

And it's those sorts of things that make you reflect.

When Alexander got his first job, it was very exciting.

Yes, absolutely.

He got the phone call and he screamed down the staircase, I got the job, and a tear came to my eye.

It still does now.

It was such a lovely feeling, really.

I've been very fortunate that Andrew has provided very well for us without me

having to go to work, and I've been able to nurture the boys.

But I'm not sure whether, looking at the next generation, you feel a lot of women

have to work, and I admire them for doing it, but in some ways I think maybe it would be good to work.

Not necessarily full-time, maybe take time off until your children are at school,

but then you get to my stage and you think, well, it would be nice to have something to do.

I mean, are you grateful she made that decision?

Yes, I am.

But I can see that now maybe she'd be enjoying it more.

Probably more having some sort of career at this stage.

Is that doable?

No, I don't think so.

I would say it probably is.

It's a matter of self-confidence, but obviously in the mid-50s it's a bit more difficult.

I'm not in the mid-50s yet, remember.

Does she lack self-confidence, do you think?

Erm, to a certain extent.

I think she doesn't realise how capable she is, really.

I think it's not a bad idea to pay for schools, because if we didn't, schools would be so nasty and crowded.

I think that the premise on which the programme was based, namely that England

was still in the grips of a Dickensian class system, was outmoded even in 1964.

It didn't reflect realities in 64.

The hounds are over there, I think.

Insofar as the programme touches back, to me, I feel it's a complete fraud.

It all appeared part of some indestructible birthright.

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 in order to see us through school, and that I got a scholarship to Oxford.

And rich children always make fun of poor children, I think.

Yes, they say, oh, look at that lovely little...

I think the premise of the original film was that there was a very strong class

system at that time, and I think that's absolutely true.

There is still a class system, but I think it's based more on financial success.

Well, there's now an underclass where people can't work.

It's true.

There are extremes at either end.

There are very successful people who are extremely rich.

And there are people who have very poor prospects.

It's true.

But it's been ever thus.

I don't think that's going to change in the future, and it's always been like that.

Last time I appeared on the programme, a very generous film director based in San

Francisco saw the programme and sent us a large trek, running to many thousands of

pounds, which we were able to do a great deal of good with in Bulgaria at the time.

So that was a wonderful by-product of the programme, and perhaps it slightly softened my objections.

It's not something I look forward to every seven years, appearing in this programme.

I'm always surprised that, you know, you appear for five or ten minutes and

anyone remembers your face, but apparently they do.

Well, I suppose the only thing for me is that I've seen what my husband looked like

at seven and 14 and 21 before I knew him, and then when I had my own children,

I could see which of them looked like their father at those stages of life, and a lot of women just don't have that.

I think what's undesirable is people who have had options don't take best advantage

of them, but I can't see there's anything wrong as long as

people don't abuse the opportunities and privileges they've had.

It's a very nonchalant little theme.

A butter wouldn't melt in its mouth, so take it very quietly and let it just present itself.

If one discounts wanting to be a train driver, a major opera singer, or a concert

pianist, it would have been nice, but, I mean, I was never good enough.

I enjoy my professional career very much indeed, but, you know, doing something for

other people gives you a satisfaction that even, you know, winning a fantastic case

on some ludicrous, archaic point of law won't quite deliver.

I think the thing where I would regard myself most successful is that I'm blessed with wonderful friends.

I'm happily married.

I think I'm an incredibly lucky person in all sorts of respects.

Is it important a fight?

Yes.

Tony was brought up in the East End of London.

I want to be a jockey when I grow up, yeah.

I want to be a jockey when I grow up.

At 14, he was already an apprentice at Tommy Gosling's racing stable at Epsom.

At 15, he'd left school.

This is a photo finished when I rode at Newbury.

I'm the one with the white cap.

I was beating a length and a half for third and I had a photo finish.

Do you regret not making it?

Well, I ought to have given my right arm at the time to become a jockey,

but now, well, I wasn't good enough.

My greatest fulfilment in life, when I rode at Kempton, in the same race as Lester Piggott, proudest day of my life.

Will you let it go?

I'll let it go.

What will you do if you don't make it as a jockey?

I don't know.

If I know I couldn't be one, I'll get out of the game.

Won't bother.

What do you think you would do then?

Run on taxes.

At 21, he was on the knowledge, and by 28, he owned his own cab.

Suppliers know you pick up, you see.

I once met Kojak, I picked him up.

I'll give you a story which happened.

The doorman called me up, and it was Buzz Aldrin, the spaceman.

And we drove out the forecourt of the hotel, and a cab pulled up, and the taxi

driver said, "Can you get his autograph?" So I heard it and say, "Mr Aldrin.

"I said, "Can I have your autograph, please?" And the cabbie said,

"No, I don't want his autograph.

"I want your autograph." And I couldn't believe it.

I said, "You're joking, ain't you?" And to this day, I thought to myself,

"You know, I'm more famous than Buzz Aldrin." He was the second man to land the cab.

Have you got a girlfriend?

Nope.

Would you like to have a girlfriend?

Nope.

You understand four Fs?

Find them, feed them and forget them.

For the other F, I'll let you use your own discrimination.

I mean, this one, I tried to do the three Fs, but I couldn't forget her.

I went to a discotheque.

He was in the pub earlier on, and afterwards, we went to a discotheque and Tony was down there.

And I just, from there, I just... That was it.

By 42, Tony and Debbie had left the East End and moved to Woodford in Essex.

At 49, they'd taken out a second mortgage on the London house and put the money into a holiday home in Spain.

From here, it's about 200 yards along, there's going to be all commercial units here.

My intentions would be to turn this house and one of these units into a sports bar.

We're putting all tellies round in a sports sort of way, like football shirts and all that memorabilia.

Audi had come along and built a brand-new supermarket there, so all my aspirations and dreams went out the window.

Well, Michael, that used to be my bank and that's been closed now for about 18 months.

As you probably understand, there is a world recession and they were, you know, affected like everybody else.

My character seems to sort of slow down while I'm out here and the pace is

different and everything's done tomorrow here.

You know, I just go to the beach, everyone sort of mingles in and it's lovely.

Our jobs can make it accessible where we can come four hours door to door from Spain back to England.

We can work three weeks of commitment of, you know, getting our money and still, you know, having a life out here.

It's a bit quiet.

It's a bit quiet, though, for you two, isn't it?

Yeah, but then you've got your bingo, don't you?

It's not quiet when we get here.

Not here.

There's only one ambition, really.

I want a baby son and if I see my baby son, then my ambition fulfilled.

No-one knows that, only you know.

Debbie and Tony have three children, Nicky, Jodie and Perry.

Nicky, as you know, he was a French polisher, which is a dying trade in England.

So we funded him, me and Debbie, on the knowledge.

Cheers, everyone.

Cheers.

We got him the bike, we got him the runs, we paid his tutoring and I couldn't ask for more.

To be more proud for when he got his badge, it was a gift from God for what happened.

I'm very proud of Perry as well.

She got in the post office and that's what she's doing, postman pill.

That's our postman pill.

She's got a lovely boyfriend and he's certainly got my blessing.

Big lad, very nice guy, loves his football, you know, typical East End kid.

You're not lazy, far from it, but I just think it's easier to iron it as it's dry.

I used to do that.

No, you never.

You paid to get your ironing done like you still do today.

You always have paid.

So how is it, all of you in the house together?

Yeah, it's all right.

She's only... She's only here because she's pregnant and she doesn't carry too well.

Can be too... Sometimes she gets on my nerves.

Sometimes they'll get on my nerves.

Sometimes I'll get on their nerves.

It's just what happens.

Well done, girl.

Give way.

Well done.

Jodie, I mean, at this present time, she just relies on us a great deal.

And...

She's been very scarred with a relationship that she was in.

Her relationship with her first love of her own life is, um, very turbulent.

But he's the father of her kid.

Jodie has a daughter, Tony.

Tony, as you appreciate, she's, um...

living with us.

You know, my daughter Jodie, she's at this present time having emotional problems and various.

...

various other problems, and most of all, I've got to make sure my Tony grows up with a safe environment.

I'll tell you what, this is a tenner... Once her mother does get better, I will certainly bond them back and

hopefully, which we pray, they become mother and daughter and everything will be fine after that.

She's growing up at an alarming rate.

When she's with any one of her friends, I'll go to her and say, Tony, and, no, no, no, no, no, stop it, Granda.

You're embarrassing me and I have to sort of pull the reins in for me.

How's the cabin going?

We had an influx of Arabs come for Ramadan.

Without them and the injection of wealth, I think the cab train would have sunk.

It's been so bad out there.

It's very odd.

The ratio before was about ten cabs to seven jobs.

When the Arabs come, it was about ten cabs to nine jobs.

When they go away and now the recession came, it's ten cabs to two jobs.

I feel that the economy will bust within five years because

people like myself have been giving and giving all the time.

We're paying.

You know, someone's getting it at our expense.

How did you prophesy what was going to happen in this last programme?

You seemed to know that the economy was going to go bad.

I feel the Labour government has got a lot to answer for.

Draining the system dry.

Giving our aid to all countries around the world.

Hemorrhaging money through the war effort.

You know, giving money to the banks and no regulation on the banks.

You can see the drip, drip, drip situation at the end of the tap.

And by the time there's no water left in the tank, they want us to put it all back in.

Sometimes on Saturday morning I go to the pictures.

Sometimes... Sometimes with my friends, sometimes with him.

You don't.

I don't.

You don't.

And why did you fall in love with him?

Don't know.

I don't know how.

I don't know how you put up with me for so long.

I don't know.

Sometimes I don't know how I stand him.

Who's to say in another ten years me and him might have split up?

Quite possible.

You know.

You don't know.

I'm not proud at all to say this, but, um, situations arise that...

I have, um, I've had regretful behaviour various times, but through...

You got caught.

Yeah.

And that was it.

You must appreciate 32 years is a long time of being married, and most of all, I mean, I've got a...

an open characteristic way about me, and, um, sometimes it has got me into

trouble, which has been well documented before.

I owe Debbie everything, because...

good or bad, high or low, rain or shine, she stuck by me.

And then...

at the end of it, I still love her, so...

and that's the reason why.

That will always be the reason why.

Were the kids angry with you?

Yeah.

Yes, they were angry with me, and the situation was it was an odd pill to swallow, because the kids are my life.

Nicky, Jodie, Perry, and... the grandchildren.

I draw a circle, they're all mine, and I'm lucky.

I'm very, very lucky, Michael.

Michael, up there's my old flat, where I used to live in.

I lived up there for 28 years.

For me, it's so small round here now.

I mean, I come back, and the memories I've got in here is... is unbelievable.

Would everybody please sit round now?

Get on with their work.

I don't want to see any backs to me.

Shouldn't be anybody turning round.

Tony, do you hear as well?

As you can see, Michael, the Bethel of Green I knew as a kid growing up, and now it's changed quite dramatically.

Not one East Ender, Cockney person like myself or anyone in the East End ever had a say in immigration.

No-one had a say of the popularisation as far as, was there too many, was there too less?

Listening to you, sometimes you sound racist, Asian.

Racist?

You talk about Asians, you talk about Japanese, and yet here in Spain you seem

to really work to integrate into the community.

Well, look, Michael, that river, with respect to you, that word racist,

it covers leaps and bounds of characteristics.

I've never been racist in a million years.

In a million years!

I love people, I'm a people lover.

You know, and in a... No way, I think that's, with respect to you, over the top.

Right, Michael, this is the fruit and veg shop.

Well, I was seven years old, I had my first wage in there.

Ten Bob a week.

This here was a pub.

This is where all the dry horses used to deliver the beer.

I used to run in and get in my... apples, and I used to feed them.

And where I was so small, they were a mammoth sort, and I just, that's where I got my love for horses from.

Why the one cooing the dog?

Four and a half fifties, four and a half fifties, four and a half.

If your father gambles, you're always looked upon how he gambles.

I try my luck, see what he does.

And I took it from there, it's sort of in you.

This is the pub and the area where my dad used to meet.

And what they used to do is get an orange box with three cards on it, a queen,

and two fours, and what they'd do is go find the lady, like the free card trick,

and consequently, they'd just sort of take their money off all the general public.

He used to go in the Nick once a week at least, and the firm used to take their

money out, pay the fine, and he was back out on the street to do his sort of devil-y ways.

I've come back here again, and it's really a travesty what's happened here.

I mean, it makes me feel like crying.

For me, it's quite sad, you know?

But, I mean, if that's what they call progress, well, so be it.

Where are we now, Tony?

I'm back at the old dog track.

We're at the Olympic Stadium, Michael.

And this is where the old dog track used to be, on this site.

And I'm here today, and I cannot believe the transformation.

It's a dream.

It's just spectacular.

And the torch from this game, should be now passed to the East End, for a new generation to come through.

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.

And Bruce.

Suzy.

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.