Original subtitles

In 1964, Granada Television brought together a group of 7-year-olds

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

I'm going to work in Woolworth's.

I read the Financial Times.

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

Everything flew up in the air and that 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.

In 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 out the side of your mouth.

I think that we all could have gone

any way that we wanted to at the time

within our capabilities.

But we only had a limited choice anyway.

Truth be told...

we didn't have the choice or private education

because they couldn't have afforded it anyway.

Our lives are changing far too much.

All of us.

To be honest, when you look at the 7-year-old us,

it's difficult to believe it is us.

I've got to say, girls,

I wanted to work in Woolworth's.

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

Sometimes we go out and play nasty with the boys

and sometimes we go out and argue with the boys.

I don't think I'll 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 Katherine.

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,

"What was it? Was it this, was it that?"

I just knew it wasn't working.

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.

♪ Said you'd be comin' back... ♪

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

she brought Glen along to watch her sing.

♪ Oh, baby ♪ We 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!

Jessie, come on!

We're completely different people.

He's very energetic

and tidy-minded,

and I'm lazy and completely un...

You're lazy?

I am completely, absolutely lazy.

Anything you want me to do?

What about the romance of getting married?

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

and I quite relish the idea of having everyone round

and having a good old drink and a celebration.

But I can have a party anytime.

Who are you on the phone to?

Never you mind.

When I got married, the primary reason was because

I wanted to have a child.

The two to me went together.

Have you and Glen thought of having your own child?

Glen would have made a great dad.

When we first got together, he sort of asked me

if we could have a family and all that,

but I felt that I was past it, to be honest.

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

But he's loved bringing them up.

Last time we talked about a bit of tension in that area.

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

and every family goes through that.

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

It's just the whole part of growing up, really.

Wasn't easy being a single mother, was it?

No, it wasn't.

I look back on it now and I'm just amazed

at how I got through it, you know.

What was the toughest part of it?

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

and being alone and scared when things happen

and things go wrong, which they always do when you've got kids.

You've got no one there to turn to, you know,

to talk about things like that.

And you had to work.

Yeah, but I was always only part-time,

so that I could fit it around school.

So who was the biggest help to you

during this whole single-parent...?

There's no doubt at all, without my mum and dad,

I would never have survived it.

They were brilliant.

They were 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, ain't they?

And how are they doing now?

Yeah, they're fine.

Dad's 80 now.

And mum's 78.

I think 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 Katherine 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 do girlie things.

Do each other's hair and things like that,

so I would miss her, but I know

that she needs to get out and move on.

Only had to have one filling.

That's 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 was far too small.

And his computer was bigger than the room, you know.

So, um...

Yes, 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.

But 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 post-graduate program.

Do 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 program.

So, sort of "Marge in charge," really, of the LLM.

It's like my baby, really.

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.

I get up of a morning

and I don't ever think, "oh, I can't face going to work."

But 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.

Sue, 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 and frail...

It started not long after the last program with Tony,

my neighbor, and he belonged to the group.

And I said, "Oh, I've been wishing

I could do dramas 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.

When I get on the stage to speak to 500 students,

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, am I?

It always takes one, you see.

Once you get one, other people tend to ask.

You never went to university and now

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

I suppose I should count my blessings

that I'm actually in a university,

having not done it myself, yeah.

Looking at it, do you wish you had had that opportunity?

Not really. It's the same as anything.

Why look back and say, "I wish I did this or had done that"?

I've had a good career. At least I'll have my own home.

Which is a new thing for my family.

My mom and dad are obviously still in Council Place.

I'll never be a rich pensioner; I'll never be able

to travel the world once I retire, I'm afraid,

but as long as I can keep the house warm

and we can feed ourselves, that will be fine.

I don't like the big boys hitting us

and the prefects sending us out for nothing.

When he was 7, Paul was in care

in a children's home in London.

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

We didn't mind that, really, because we didn't know

what was going on 'cause we were a bit young.

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

Well, they separated originally, I think.

And they eventually got divorced.

I went to the boarding school for one year

and then we emigrated to Australia.

Paul settled with his father and stepmother

in a suburb of Melbourne.

Would you like to get married, Paul?

Tell me why not.

I don't like like, um...

Say you had a wife.

Like, say you had to eat what they cooked you.

And say I don't like greens. Well, I don't.

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

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

'cause I think I do, but I want to be happily married,

and not before when I'm not sure.

What was it that you fell in love with?

What is it about him?

His helplessness, I suppose.

Just the motherly instinct in me,

to pick him up and cuddle him.

He's also very good-looking, I think,

but he doesn't agree with me.

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

I mean, I can tell quite a few stories,

but the one that really irritates me the most is,

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

I say, "Fine, all right, I will one day."

We had our 20th wedding anniversary

just before Christmas.

Which is the life sentence.

And one 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...

Kids here and there.

I don't think you mean to be,

probably stop thinking about each other a lot.

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?

Yeah, but not in public.

No. Yes.

But is the chemistry still there?

Yes.

You don't sound sure.

Well, we like to keep it private.

I had to wait for the answer.

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

Although I'm getting on top of that more now, you know.

Just the simple things to say to Susan.

"I love you," something like that.

I mean, I can tell you about it,

but I really haven't been able to say it

to Sue, you know.

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

It wasn't directly due to our relationship.

It started at work, unfortunately.

Which brought my self-esteem down,

which tended to affect everything else.

I know the lack of confidence is there.

It still applies to me.

But I don't dwell on it.

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

I just think you take on

a little bit more of each other's personality.

'Cause whenever I was decisive and made a decision and said,

"Let's do this," because Paul,

not that he couldn't make the decision

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

"Oh, stop asking questions," and I suppose now I start to question myself,

"maybe he 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.

Okay, the question was, Gracie Fields' sang...

"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.

It's got six letters. Gracie Fields sang...

They have their own laundry. It's a complete unit.

They have their own lockup garage.

So there's a couple of parcels there...

And that's why Paul's there.

I call him "the man about the house" at work,

because he changes light globes.

Problems with your taps, they go check it out.

Cleans the gutterings, fixes squeaky doors,

'cause the village is now 25 years old.

So the maintenance is starting to gather.

How are you doing 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.

I've probably always been

a little bit more relaxed around older people, probably.

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 9.

Then there's Ryan,

who is about to turn 7 at the end of this month.

Then there's Haley, who's just turned 5.

And she'll start school in the new year.

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

and he is 3 this week.

He's the joker out of the lot of them.

If he does something and you laugh,

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

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

I look back at my grandmother

and I've taken some wonderful lessons from her.

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

but I think 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.

I've already made them, so there they are for the kiddies.

And your Rich likes fairy bread.

Get some spoilers and snakes in there.

♪ Happy birthday, dear Shannon ♪

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

Not you!

It's a real struggle for them, financially.

But at the same time, like all young kids, there's areas

we look at and go, "We didn't have that."

I've got 23 threepenny pieces,

and I don't know how many ha'penny 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.

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 traveled across Australia.

We were close 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, we spent 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 didn't want to tell her that.

Well, they miss you when you're away.

Do you miss them?

I didn't miss them, like, God, I wanna 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.

It is good.

When we were in London, we went to Greenwich.

It was built as a maritime retirement village, almost,

for the sailors from the Napoleonic 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?

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, even to the point

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

You're teaching other people to care.

How are you dealing with getting old?

I don't think you really notice it.

You still think you're the same.

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.

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.

You got a nice shot of the bin, there.

That one's good. You're getting better.

Shut up.

Do you measure your life in terms of success

and failure in any sense?

I don't really.

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

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

It's just about getting on with life

and then enjoy 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 we get stabbed, we go, "aaaah!"

Neil grew up in a Liverpool suburb

and had dreams of going to Oxford

but didn't get in.

Instead, he went to Aberdeen University,

but dropped out after the first term.

At 21, Neil was working on a building site

and living in a squat.

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

and I've always thought it, 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 in politics

or something like this.

At 28, we found Neil homeless,

wandering around the west coast of Scotland.

If the money runs out, 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 likely to be doing?

What are you likely to be doing?

That's a horrible question.

Um...

I tend to think the most likely answer is that

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

Can I just point out some of the considerable disadvantages?

First of all...

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 northwest of England,

and was a Liberal Democrat member

of his local district council.

It was a committee decision, a majority decision.

His own group on the Establishment Committee

agreed with the decision.

Councilor Hughes?

The Councilor Cook has reconsidered his opinion

he ventured at that meeting.

Here we are in the center

of the ward I represent on the council.

These are our public toilets.

I can assure you that no more fierce battle has been fought,

either on the playing fields or indeed

on the battlefields of England, to save

what might appear to be a comparatively

insignificant local amenity.

It sounds vaguely comic, but presumably it's not to you.

But 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 marginalized.

My strength is being able to keep going, really.

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 good will toward the series.

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

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

For so many millions of people,

I'm here wearing my heart on my sleeve.

And they think they know absolutely everything about me.

There were countless people writing me, saying,

"I know exactly how you feel."

And actually, from those letters,

I would say none of them, not a single one of them,

knew exactly how I was feeling.

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

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

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

what I do to be representing people

at 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 councilor.

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 program

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 the television screen.

Even if somebody sent it back to me and said,

"Well, I read it, and it's rubbish, actually,"

that would be very demoralizing,

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 can all expect to see him as Prime Minister

of the United Kingdom."

This wasn't a joke, I assure you

he said this with absolute seriousness.

Now, it was ludicrous, but this is how wildly skewed

the perceptions have become.

Do you think I would really have been

invited to Australia if they were aware that I was someone

who lives on a few quid a week benefit and has

as much chance of changing the future of the United Kingdom

as...

I don't know, someone who's serving

a lifetime jail sentence?

Yes, I'd say I believed in God.

Are you religious?

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

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

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

And I still don't know.

And how has he been treating you?

Well, I said to somebody last week that I preferred

the Old Testament to the New Testament.

Because in the Old Testament, God is very unpredictable.

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

And Doreen as well...

I was first a lay reader in London.

After completing a little more training,

I was relicensed by the bishop of Carlisle.

Well, good morning.

Welcome to our service today.

Just a couple of notices first.

If you haven't already been told,

the proposed pet show is, unfortunately, cancelled.

I'm the lay minister.

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

That includes leading services, preaching, taking part in the readings,

helping to distribute the communion, and so on.

In fact, I can do more or less everything a priest can do.

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.

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 honor 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.

And it's true, 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 would have thought that was pretty obvious.

In the winter, if you live in the country, 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.

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

most of his life, then he's achieved the utmost philosophical breakthrough,

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

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

and I want to be out doing something.

I want to be out changing things.

I have always had a nervous complaint.

I've had it since I was 16.

It was responsible for my leaving university

and for some of my difficulties with work.

Do you worry about your sanity?

Um...

Other people sometimes worry about it.

Like who?

As I said, I sometimes can

be found behaving in...

in an erratic fashion.

Sometimes I get very frustrated.

Very angry.

For no apparent reason.

For a reason which won't be apparent to other people around me.

I don't see any way out.

I've thought of everything I possibly could.

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

and a nice place to live would be the solution.

Well, I haven't succeeded.

I can't see any immediate future at all.

Although there have been times

in my life when I've been suicidal,

that wasn't one of them.

So there have been worse than...

Yes, but it's not for this program

to expose my private feelings,

and yet many people feel it has.

Ultimately.

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

than I perhaps ever have in the past.

My formal contact with the psychiatric establishment

belongs mostly to my mid and later teens

and a short period of my early 20s.

But I soon came to the opinion

that I could help myself far better

than those who were purporting to help me.

But I was aware even then that a lot of the therapeutic technique

is about leading people to exactly this conclusion,

if it's done well.

So I'm not going down the line of criticizing

the medical establishment.

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

No, I did have contact.

But then you discontinued it.

Yes.

Do you still think that was wise?

Yes.

Are you scared of getting old?

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

I think if I can reach something like 70

or 75 in reasonable health,

that will be quite enough for me.

When I get married,

I don't want to have any children,

because they're always doing naughty things

and making the whole house untidy.

I always told myself that I would never have children.

Why?

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 stand a very fair chance

of being not totally full of happiness

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

Have you ever really had

a romantic emotional relationship?

Oh, I've had several,

but the fact that I'm living alone still

obviously betrays the fact that none of them has endured.

Is there a reason for that?

Relationships always involve two people.

But the string of failures,

does that tell us something?

Well, I'm sure it does.

Any fool can see that.

I'm not saying you're a fool.

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 it more likely 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 anyone.

It sounds like ghostly colored people.

'Cause you think of a purple person

with red eyes and yellow feet.

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

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

but there's the evidence.

Probably when I was 7, I just lived in a wonderful world

where everything was a sensation.

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

What makes you happy?

"Happy" is a difficult word.

How many people are happy?

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

and enjoying a relaxed meal with some friends.

Just being with friends.

I think the few weekends in the year

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

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

I can think of hardly anything better

than walking across the fields

when we just chat about the things we're both interested in

and our aspirations, and I think that's the noblest

and in many ways most satisfying of relationships

you can possibly have.

How it would be if we lived next-door to each other

I don't know, it might be very different.

Maybe the joy in some relationships is that

you see some people only infrequently.

I don't think you ought to go to university

if you want to be an astronaut.

Watch this.

Peter and Neil were childhood friends

growing up in Liverpool.

Peter went to a comprehensive school

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

I would like to think that democracy is here to stay.

Perhaps we haven't got full democracy.

In fact, we probably haven't, but...

It's a pretty good system.

Are you surprised by the way England's being governed?

I'm not surprised with the people who govern it

at the moment right now.

I've even stopped being amazed.

Why?

Well, I don't want to get dragged into party politics,

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 rad 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 back, 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 ghost 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,

'cause way back in the day, I was a big Elvis Costello fan.

And I read an interview with him in which he said, "if you think

I'm a good songwriter, listen to 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, Caroline Sheffield said she loved me.

And I'm going to marry... many...

marry her when I grow up.

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

but I mean, what, I'm just gone 20.

Haven't even been abroad yet in my life.

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

So, Paul, what do you want to do?

Do you just want me and Peter 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."

You know that's not true.

And you've always played together since then?

Yeah, more or less.

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

Our boy is 19, our daughter's 16.

And how are they doing?

Great. Doing really good.

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.

Unconditionally, you giving them your time.

Well, if I can't be an astronaut,

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

like my dad is.

So are you under pressure to get a job?

Yeah, I suspect I am from my parents.

Keep dropping hints.

Teachers are undervalued and underrated.

And the system's beginning to crumble.

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

And it's... it's very disillusioning.

I left teaching not long after that program.

And it was actually nothing to do with the program.

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 thought I had been honest with myself about that

and honest to the kids I was teaching at the time

and move on to something else.

After teaching, Peter studied law

and joined the civil service.

Gabby also works there.

Civil service, despite changes currently taking place,

is still comparatively a pretty decent employer.

What area of the civil service are you in?

Department of Work and Pensions.

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

When Pete writes, he often wants to share that

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

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

And that's quite difficult, isn't it?

I'm sure it is, yeah.

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

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

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

and I said, "But of those 120, 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.

No.

What have been for you the best times?

Tommy Smith scoring the second goal in Rome.

Definitely.

One of the all-times.

Which game was that?

That was the European Cup final, 1977.

That's still up there, by the way.

But along with what?

But, well...

Um...

Getting married for the second time

and having two children

have been hugely significant moments in my life.

What do you want out of life?

The satisfaction of knowing

that I've left some sort of imprint

rather than just lived out my life.

♪ You've been gone for so long, Evangeline ♪

♪ No one's looking for you anymore ♪

I hesitate 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 U.K.'s Americana Act of the Year

at the British Country Music Awards.

From time to time, like anybody else,

I look back and think, "I wish I hadn't done that,

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 feel 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

where 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...

That's not got a lot of money,

but has got some money, not a lot.

Jackie grew up in London's East End.

Have you got any boyfriends?

That's personal, isn't it?

By the time she was 21, Jackie had married Mick

and moved to the outskirts of London.

She and Mick had decided early on

that they didn't want to have children.

Basically, I would say that would be 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, at the end of the day,

we would be happier leading our own lives.

Oh...

And this one on, oh, yeah.

Here we go.

Had a brief but very sweet relationship,

the result of which was Charlie.

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.

One would do, actually.

Right, Charlie, there's yours.

Ooh! Please eat it all up.

Oh!

And, James.

Thanks, Mum.

Good boy.

And last but not least...

You going to 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.

Go and get 'em!

At 49, despite the split, the family were living

in the same area of Scotland.

Seven years later, they're still there.

So tell me who lives where.

Um, 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.

Um, because Ian's been diagnosed with cancer.

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

The strange part about this is,

his mother has also got cancer as well.

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 to be.

She's terminal.

How long has she got?

Don't know.

They don't know how long.

I think 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 be sorry

and be sad, she wants us to go on and live our lives

and it's not stopped her from trying to live her life.

It seems to have been one thing after another.

My stepmom died, my brother-in-law died,

my sister's died.

She wasn't 50.

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

and collapsed on her way back up to her bedroom

with a major brain hemorrhage.

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

Uh, in her stride.

Nothing seems to be getting to her.

She's always been a strong woman.

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

She's always a 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 the four of you feel close?

All: Mm-hmm.

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

Actually, I would say in the last six months,

they've all suddenly seemed to have gotten maturity.

My mum, 'cause she got five girls,

she has seven years bad luck.

That's why she's got five girls.

Two club sandwiches on brown bread,

one Hilton burger with cheese.

Yes, chef.

Charlie is a sous chef in a nearby hotel.

And James works part-time as a security guard

in a local supermarket.

Check two aisles up from your current location.

I expect my baby in December.

We're 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.

Are you excited to be a gran?

Couldn't bear that.

She doesn't like being called "granny."

No, I will be "gran," not "granny," thank you.

Not nappy full 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 boys' dad,

was severely injured in a road traffic accident.

He subsequently died of those injuries.

Unfortunately, he 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, "Ha, I got away with it.

I've not got all those nights."

I'm due to go into the Army on the 17th of October,

where I'll learn to become a medic.

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 to war is part of being a soldier

and that's what you 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 watch, you're catching up to him.

Go on, Lee.

I was working up here until very recently.

But then discovered that I've got rheumatoid arthritis.

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

Misty, come on then.

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 poor,

if you don't help them, they'll sort of die, wouldn'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.

So, looking at the world of cutbacks,

how is this affecting you?

I, along with 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 inasmuch as I've got three sons

all working, whilst James here has got

Mia and a family of his own.

Charlie and Lee don't, so they help me out.

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.

You tell him to come get me a job and I'll do it.

I know he loves her and he loves her.

I don't, I love him.

I'd like to be able to have a happy family.

I mean, I know it's not possible to be happy all the time,

but as much of the time as possible.

What about your own life?

What about relationships for you?

I would like a relationship.

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, some people

have obviously had bad experiences with it.

There was a chap that we filmed 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 fella?

Pulse would be nice.

♪ If I said that I love you and you know it's true ♪

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 is going to be good.

What sort of things do you do?

Ride, swim, play tennis.

Ping-pong.

And I might play croquet.

Things like that.

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

My youngest brother's 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 the film as being

rural, in the sense that your family

had some big connections

to sort of rural Scotland.

I think also, when we were 21,

I remember having to go to some reunion 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.

We'd been e-mailing each other

since forty-something...

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

and I just threw a line at Nick, I said,

"I'm going to bed now.

Perhaps you and I ought to do a double act on the sofa."

I mean...

And he wrote back some funny message.

No wonder! I would, wouldn't I?

When I leave the school,

I'm down for Heathfield and Southover Manor.

And then maybe I may want to go to an 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 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.

And 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. I went to Paris.

I went to secretarial college and got a job.

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

Well, I just wasn't interested in school

and just wanted to get away.

If you had 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'd like to find out

all about the moon and all that.

And I said I was interested in physics and chemistry,

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.

A long time ago, he must be somewhere in 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.

That could easily have been the start of,

"I want to go to the moon."

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 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.

You know, it was what I said when I was 7,

and it's still the most sensible,

but what about them?

If you'd been somebody who had had fixed ideas

of a woman's role in marriage that meant

dinner on the table at 6:00 every evening...

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've 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. We could easily drift apart.

There are so many pressures...

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!

Cryss is my new wife.

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, we need the list.

Go on.

Um...

Tell me, do you have any boyfriends, Suzy?

Um...

Yes.

Tell me about him.

But he lives off in Scotland

and I think he's 13.

Have you got any boyfriends, Suzy?

What is your attitude towards marriage for yourself?

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 can't just walk through a marriage

and think 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

the difficult times.

One of my favorite 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 to me.

After I left the Dales, this was where I spent

the next six years, and then I went to America.

Look, isn't this beautiful? This is Mob Quad.

I believe that it's a historical fact

that quite a lot students were massacred in the middle ages.

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.

So this was my staircase in my first year

and also in my third year.

There was this fellow who lived in the room nextdoor to me

and he came in one day to tell me some story.

And on his way out, he said, "Do you know,

I don't associate intelligence with your accent."

It would seem really ridiculous

to any of my friends who watch this if I said,

"Christ, aren't I a great success?

Look at me!"

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.

If you'd been offered

a similar type of job over here...

In a heartbeat.

You would have stayed.

In a heartbeat.

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

Maggie Thatcher was squeezing the universities

like crazy at that very moment in time.

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.

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 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.

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?

Well, I don't like babies.

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

Come catch it.

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

Mummy? Laura wants you.

We were lucky.

We had a very good family unit with them growing up.

And that meant an awful lot to me,

that I was able to do that for them,

'cause 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...

I just do my best and do what I can for them.

Did all your children

go to university or your daughter did?

Yes, and my son did, the eldest one.

Hello.

I haven't had a successful career, but I do feel fulfilled.