I'm going to work in Woolworth's.
When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut.
When I get married, I would like to have two children.
My heart's desire is to see my daddy.
I don't want to answer that.
(narrator) This is no ordinary outing to the zoo.
It's a very special occasion.
We've brought these children together for the very first time.
(screaming)
They're like any other children, except that they come
from startlingly different backgrounds.
Stop it at once.
We've brought these children together because we wanted a glimpse of England
in the year 2000.
The shop steward and the executive of the year 2000
are now seven years old.
(Michael Apted) In 1964, World In Action made "Seven up!"
and we've been back to film these children every seven years.
They are now 49.
Is it important to fight? Yes.
Tony was brought up in the East End of London.
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 finish, when I rode at Newbury.
I'm the one with the white cap.
I was beaten a length and a half off third,
and I had a photo finish.
(Michael) Do you regret not making it?
I would have given my right arm at the time to become a jockey,
but now...
Well, I wasn't good enough.
(Michael) What will you do if you don't make it as a jockey?
I don't know.
If I knew I couldn't be one, I'd get out of the game.
Wouldn't bother.
What do you think you would do then?
Learn on taxis.
At 21, he was on the knowledge,
and by 28, he owned his own cab.
It's surprising who you pick up, you see.
I once met Kojak. I picked him up.
And Warren Mitchell, Alf Garnett, you know.
Have you got a girlfriend? No.
Would you like to have a girlfriend?
No.
You understand four F's?
Find 'em, feed 'em and forget 'em.
The other "F" - I'll let you use your own discriminish.
I mean, this one I tried to do the 3 F's,
but I couldn't forget her.
I went to a discothèque.
He was in the pub earlier on,
and afterwards we went to a discothèque.
And Tony was standing there, and I just -
From there, I just - that was it.
(laughs)
Couldn't get rid of him. (laughs)
We have our ups and downs. No more than anyone else.
I think you gotta work at a marriage.
I think all marriages go through stages.
You can't stand each other. You go through, you know -
I think, "Oh, god, I hate him. I wish he'd get out." I do.
We've been to the edge of the cliff
and looked over a couple of times,
and we've always seemed to sort of go back,
and we've sort of stayed the course.
But I must say - I mean, it's not easy being married.
By 42, Tony and Debbie had left the East End
and moved to Woodford in Essex.
We were going to put a conservatory here, but if you look along here,
we put a patio in and the pond for the fish,
but the only thing I ever done
was I planted them three trees.
Well, since you was last here, Michael...
We had small trees, if you remember.
Now they've sort of grown a bit.
(Michael) So why are the trees singed?
We was burning some Rubbish at the back
and set light to the tree, and there we all were,
sort of like throwing all buckets of water over it,
and sadly enough, it singed the tree.
At 49, they've taken out a second mortgage on the London house
and sunk the money in a holiday home in Spain.
I'm very pleased with the house.
I said the progress we made in the little space of time that we've had
to work here and get it all sort of shipshape
I think is done, really,
to the testament of my wife Debbie.
As per usual.
(Michael laughs)
(Tony) Debbie went to the furniture shop,
and she sort of picked all the furniture.
All what you see is all Debbie's choice of furniture
and her, really, sort of style.
The floor -
We were led to believe that we had a choice of tiling,
whether it's a light beige or, you know, light brown.
That's the first I've heard that we had a choice,
'cause I would have had plain.
I've just gone into the neighbours' house, and they've got all plain.
Well, there you go. I never got told that.
He said it was a choice that we had when we suggested to buy it,
so that was where the mistake was made.
Because you don't listen. Say that again.
You don't listen. Can't hear you. (laughs)
Tony and Debbie still work as London cabbies.
We sold our cabs because we are going to spend more time out here.
So it's not really conducive to own a cab, is it?
Because the cab will be left out on the drive or, you know -
It's pointless, so we just hired a cab independently now.
I'm working harder now than I really ever have done,
but I feel that it's for something.
Son, why do you want to be a cab driver for, mate?
All the holidays in Spain every year...
But, son, it's hard work out there. You're not reaching me yet.
Not getting to you. No, you're not getting to me. All right?
Now be bigger. Dominate me, all right? Son...
At 28, Tony was taking acting lessons.
Now he supplements his income with occasional TV jobs.
(Tony) Oi!
That's all I got on me.
Mate, if I had a pound for every time I've heard that, I'd be a rich man.
Get him!
A guy contacted me from my agency,
from my acting agency, and I got in touch with him.
And he writes plays, and he's been inspired by your up programs,
which go all round the world, and he saw it.
And we got together and we wrote a biographical play
all about my life story.
We took one of these episodes over to New York and done it on a play reading.
And I got up, playing the lead role, you know,
and it just blew the roof off.
And we're looking for someone to pick it up and put it on stage.
(woman) 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?
Get on with your work at the front.
Tony! Don't turn round again.
There's only one ambition, and, really, I want a baby son.
If I see my baby son, that will be my ambition fulfilled.
No one knows that. Only you know.
Debbie and Tony have three children -
Nicky, Jody and Perri.
Nicky's doing quite well. He's still a French polisher.
It's an old-time profession, as you know.
He's working for a firm,
and he's very happy in his work, isn't he?
He's been brought up very respectful to people,
very well-mannered person,
He's a hard worker.
Jody, I mean, at this present time,
she's 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
was very turbulent,
but he's the father of her kid.
We're going to make sure she gets through it.
And it's been quite a strain on Debbie and I
to see her in that sort of situation.
I'm very proud of Perri as well.
She got in the post office, and that's what's she doing.
Postman Pel. That's our postman Pel.
She loves it, you know. She works hard.
She's up at four in the morning.
She's got a lovely boyfriend.
He loves her more than you can imagine,
and he's certainly got my blessing.
Big lad, very nice guy, loves his football.
You know, typical East End kid.
Go. Aah!
Head up, son. That's too quick.
We are the backbone for the kids, aren't we?
Yeah, but I think your parents are anyway, you know.
Your parents are -
You never visualize anything ever happening to your parents, do you?
You think they are there forever.
Toni's five, Harry's four, nearly five,
and little Pru, she's nearly two.
No, three. She's three.
I'm an hands-on granddad.
I love my grandchildren more, if you can imagine,
I'd say not my own kids, but in a different way.
It's an obsession of love, you know.
You see these grandchildren, and they're part of you.
No, granddad. No.
They're hard work at times.
We don't mind, though, Michael. I mean -
'cause you slow down and you don't realize you're slowing down.
All I understand is dogs' prices,
girls, knowledge, roads, streets, squares
and mum and dad and love.
That's all I understand, that's all I want to understand.
By the time he was 35,
both Tony's parents had died.
I'm at the graveside. I'm talking to her, little things.
I've got all images running through me mind,
sayin' like, "Tony, go downstairs, get me fine weights."
You know, "one and a penny."
And I used to go in the shop.
She used to throw the cotton in an hair curler
over the landing,
and I used to tie the cigarettes on this bit of cotton.
She used to pull 'em up, and she goes -
See her in the end - (inhales)
"Thanks, Tone. See you after school. Be good."
And that's the way it was.
We knew my dad was terminally ill,
although having said that,
still didn't make it any easier for us.
When my dad died, I took it really hard.
I can't.
Nellie Rose is - my mum, 'cause her name is Nell,
and her mother's name's Rose,
so my Jody and all the family
were conjuring up some names that we could name it.
Jody at the finish said "Nellie Rose",
the name of our mums.
Sometimes on a Saturday morning I go to the pictures,
sometimes with my friends and sometimes with him.
You don't. I do.
She don't.
(Michael) And why did you fall in love with him?
Don't know.
I don't know how you put up with me for so long.
I don't know how. 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.
When we filmed Debbie and Tony at 42,
the marriage seemed to be in trouble.
I'm not proud at all to say this,
but situations arise that -
I have - have had regretful behaviour various times,
but through...
You got caught, and that was it.
That's, you know -
I'm not lying about the fact, you know.
You could always cover it up and suggest other things,
but, you know, it's true and let it be true.
You caught him?
Yeah.
What happened?
Well, you know, it was touch and go
whether we carried on from it or not.
I did feel, you know, I wish things that were said then
was never said.
I mean, Perri wouldn't go to school for three weeks.
She wouldn't go out the door, you know.
She was quite upset about it all, and, you know.
I think it was a big shock,
because, you know, you are their mum and dad.
They're tangerines, ain't they?
We got on from there.
It's sort of seven years down the line,
and we are happy as can be now.
Karen told me to get me knickers here.
She said they're better than Marks & Spencer's.
(laughs) (laughs)
Well, let's hope they're easy to get off.
There's 96% English here
who bought all their houses in Spain,
and this is where they shop every Saturday.
It's just like an old petticoat lane market, sort of years ago.
How much are they, darling? (speaks Spanish)
What I like - it's so relaxing down here, Michael.
You just walk along, and things are happening, the music's playing.
There's an English pub there you can just go in,
and it's really home from home but with the weather.
From here - it's about 200 yards along -
There's going to be all commercial units here.
My intentions would be to turn one of these units into a sports bar.
We're putting all tellies round in a sports sort of way,
football shirts and all that memorabilia.
This is tomorrow for me. This is my future here.
If I happen to get some sort of business
and I was to bring my Nicky
or bring my Jody and my Perri out here,
then I'll have the best of both worlds.
I'll have my family here,
plus, the kids could be schooled.
Well, they can get what they want, can't they?
If you have got to work for it,
and it's them who can just ask for money and get it,
and they can buy what they want.
I feel that the economy will bust within five years
because people like myself have been giving and giving all the time.
We're hardworking, family type of people
who have contributed everything under this Tony Blair's government.
We have to work, we have to maintain the mortgage,
we have to bring up the families,
and I feel that I've had enough.
I've had enough of working all these hours.
Congestion charges, £40 a week now.
Zero tolerance with the police with parking tickets.
We're paying.
Now someone's gettin' it at our expense.
Does it make you sad
that you're going to have to leave your roots, your country?
I can't even go out in the East End now to have a drink.
The pubs are literally closing down.
It's - other cultures are buyin' all my old tradition up.
Everyone likes their own culture,
and I'm no different from anybody else,
but being in England, if you suggest this,
you are targeted as, you know, an oddball.
"Oh, you mustn't say that."
Safety by numbers, eh, is that what they call it?
On the contrary, I would say, I'm sorry.
If you don't like it, it's not to be offensive,
it's just to let you know
that my way of being brought up was all my own people,
and I like being with me own people, and I'm a traditionalist.
How much do you want play for? Fiver?
10 pesetas.
Whoa!
(Michael) What's the dream now?
It is to be happy, which I am.
I am happy now being healthy with all my family.
We all want happy and health for our family. Anything else will be a bonus.
And that's all I really want.
And that's all I'm really after.
I don't want no more or less than that.
Ohh.
Unlucky Tony. Unlucky.
Some people from Africa come here,
but they - when they go, they put their clothes on.
Jackie, Lynn and Sue
all grew up in the East End of London
and were friends in the same junior school.
With this school, we do metalwork and woodwork,
and the boys do cookery.
We had a teacher at school that his favourite ploy was,
"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
any way that we wanted to at the time
within our capabilities,
I mean, we just - we chose our own jobs.
But we only had a limited choice anyway.
I mean, truth be told, we didn't have a choice of private education,
because they couldn't have afforded it anyway.
Change is too much, Mike.
Our lives are changing far too much, all of us.
To be honest, when you look at the seven-year-old us,
it's difficult to believe it is us.
I mean, it's like it's someone else you're looking at,
this little cute thing.
I mean, I can't remember being... Well, I wasn't cute.
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 he has got some money, not a lot.
(Michael) Have you got any boyfriends?
Um... Um...
That's personal, innit?
By the time she was 21, Jackie had married Mick
and moved to the outskirts of London.
It was horrific, really, what happened to the wedding cake.
I mean, it was sitting right in between Mick and myself
when suddenly the columns just completely gave way
and it just all sort of fell into one.
I would say on average, 19 is probably too young.
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 happier leading our own lives.
...Jackie.
She and Mick had decided early on
that they didn't want children.
Basically I would say because I'm far too selfish.
I enjoy doing what I want when I want and how I want,
and certainly at the moment
I can't see any way around that.
Oh, and... This one on.
Here we go. Oh, yeah.
Had a brief but very sweet relationship,
the result of which was Charlie.
Give us a 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 'em.
Just, you know - one would do, actually.
Right, Charlie. There's yours.
Please eat it all up.
And James.
Thanks, mum. Good boy.
And last but not least...
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 more sons.
James. (James) All right.
By 42, they had split up.
Lee.
Go on, Lee. Go and get 'em.
At 49, despite the split,
the family all live in the same area of Scotland.
There's your dad!
Lee and Charlie's birthdays are only a month apart,
so we tend to do something in between
so that we celebrate both their birthdays.
So we usually go somewhere like amusement park.
(Michael) That Lee's got a lot of nerve, hasn't he?
And a little bit of bravado, I think.
Because his older brothers had said no,
I think he decided, "I'm going to do this one."
Yeah! (laughs)
Whoo!
Has Charlie shown any interest as to his father?
No. Ian's his father as far as he's concerned.
He knows and the other boy knows,
the whole family know that biologically he's not,
but in every respect Ian is his father,
always has been,
he just done everything with him, been everything to him,
taught him everything.
What would you do if you had lots of money, about £2?
I would buy meself a new nice house,
you know, one that's all nice and comfy.
Oh, quite like that.
Jackie suffers from rheumatoid arthritis
and lives off disability benefit.
(Michael) How is money for you?
Could do with more, as just about everybody would say,
but we manage.
We cut our cloth accordingly.
You've got x amount, and that's what you do.
I can imagine you in that.
(Michael) Has Liz got anything to do with that?
Liz has always got something to do with that.
Ian's her son, but she also says that I'm here
and she's got three grandchildren here that she loves dearly,
and she will be there for us.
James has just had a trip to Alton Towers
with the school.
Suddenly she'll say, "You pay the trip,
I'll give him his spending money",
Which is brilliant, because it just makes life easier for me.
Now, you've moved in the last seven years.
Tell me about that.
Because of the arthritis that I've got,
I needed to come to the ground floor,
and this particular area that I'm in now
is an area that I like.
It's close to Liz, my mother-in-law,
so from that point of view it's - it suits.
The school's across the road for the boys,
good neighbours,
which makes a difference wherever your property is,
it's how the East End used to be about 30 years ago.
Doors used to be open, the neighbours all watched for each other.
If one neighbour had a problem, the other neighbours helped out.
That's how it is here.
That's what this place is like. It's like a village.
We deal with the problems with the boys as and when they arise.
I mean, you've always got the problem of drink
and drugs and smoking and not smoking
and, you know, that sort of thing.
I mean, Charlie's of an age now
where I can't mother him, but I can't be his friend, either.
He wants to work, he wants to leave school,
and he wants to get an apprenticeship to car mechanics,
but the chances of him doing that are probably very slim.
Lee, take your time, babe. You'll make yourself ill.
Don't care.
James tends to be a bit of a computer freak.
He wants to produce and make his own games.
(boy) That looks just like your brain - mush.
Lee tends to be, like, the outspoken one
and a bit like I was at his age, really.
In fact, he's very much like I was at his age.
Is that a worry?
I think that's - that's terrible.
How dare you say that to me? Is that a worry?
Why would that be a worry? Do you think I've turned out badly?
No, but sometimes when you look at yourself,
you don't always see things you like in yourself,
and then you see them in your child and you think...
Yeah, but I never said he'd picked up all of my traits.
I actually think he's picked up probably the best.
(fussing) If you're not going to play nicely...
Right, go to bed, then. No!
He has a temper that isn't as bad as when he was younger,
but it is something that he knows about
and he tries very hard to control.
Does your temper get you into trouble?
You're probably the best one to answer that.
Does it?
I mean, you and I have had arguments on occasions.
Did you meet enough men before you decided who to marry?
I mean, what do you mean by "settle down"?
I mean, if you think that getting married, as far as we're concerned,
is a case of going to work, come home, cook tea for hubby,
going to bed, getting up, going to work, you're totally mistaken.
(Michael) I like it when you shout at me.
I'm not sure you do, really.
What happened at 21?
You asked me if I'd had enough experience with men before I got married,
and I thought that was actually an insulting question,
and I got very angry,
and we actually stopped filming because of it.
And if you look at the tapes of me at 21,
I am sitting, and to all intents and purposes
I might as well have not been there.
But I was really angry
that you even thought you could get -
You wouldn't have asked some of the other people in this program that question.
You will edit this program as you see fit.
I've got no control over that.
You definitely come across as this is your idea
of what you want to do and how you see us,
and that's how you portray us.
This one may be - may be the first one that's about us
rather than about your perception of us.
So how up to now have I got you wrong?
How have you got me wrong?
The last one was very much based on... The sympathy
and-and the illness that I've got
and what I may or may not be able to do.
It should have been about what I can do,
what I am doing, what-what I will do.
Don't make that mistake, Mike.
I am no way - I am -
I am down and I am depressed about my illness,
but I'm certainly not down and depressed about my life.
And there are a lot of the times
that I sit and I cringe when I watch those programs,
not just for me, but for other people.
You can ask me about Ian, and you know full well
I'm going to say to you it's none of your business, I'm not talking about it.
Now, there are people in this program that don't do that,
that, quite of their own free will,
will talk about their marriages
or their divorces or the state of their lives,
but I don't think you should be into that.
I don't think you should even be asking that.
It's part of people's lives,
and this program is about people's lives.
Yeah, but that's -
See, to me, that's a part of my life
that will never go on this program.
You know I'd married. My ex-husband never took part in this.
My partner now will never take part in this.
But that's not my fault. No, but that's because that's the way I want it.
But it still doesn't stop you trying
to get that information from me.
So what would you like to talk about
if you want me to represent you?
We've talked a bit about the children.
What I want to do.
What I hope to do.
I just don't want that personal conversation.
OK, well, let's talk about that -
What you hope to do and what you hope for the boys.
What I hope to do.
I'd, actually -
I'd like to go back to school
so that I can hold a conversation with anybody in the world
and know what I'm talking about.
So that I'm not stuck -
"I know a little bit about that, but I don't really know enough."
I'd love to know...
Actually, I'd really love to start my education all over again.
My mum, 'cause she got five girls,
she had seven - um, seven years' bad luck.
That's why she's got five girls.
I'd like to be able to have a happy family.
I mean, I know that it's not possible to be happy all the time,
but as much of the time that it was possible.
I don't know what Suzy's had.
What's Suzy had that I haven't had? I mean, until I know that...
(Michael) Are you different from what I should have expected
at 7 and 14 and 21?
Maybe not enough, but I've got it.
I think I'm actually more intelligent than you thought I would be.
I have reached a level, um... in my life
that I'm happy with,
and I enjoy doing - being - I enjoy being me,
but I don't think you ever really expected me
to turn out the way I have.
How was that, Lee? Great!
(laughing, indistinct)
If we did all love Geoffrey
and we all want to marry him,
I think I know the one that he likes best, and that's her.
I don't think I'd... Get married too early.
I'd like to have a full life first, and...
I'd like to enjoy myself before I -
Yeah, before you can commit yourself to a family.
Marriage means a different thing to me. I've still got my ideals.
I don't know what it's all about.
Sue was 24 when she married Billy.
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 she was 35, she and Billy had 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.
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.
♪ Don't you remember you told me you loved me, baby?
At 42, when we filmed Sue in the karaoke bar,
she brought Glen along to watch her sing.
♪ ...Baby, baby, baby, oh, baby
We've just met and things are going well,
but now obviously things have gone very well.
(Michael) Is this love?
Oh, I think so, yeah.
We've known each other for a long, long time before the seven years,
and we've always, always liked each other.
He's good looking.
He's very good looking. He's not bad, is he?
Everyone says he looks like... Paul Weller.
Whether that's true or not, especially now he's growing his hair.
(Jackie) Susan most of all likes Lesley. Do I?
She keeps changing her mind, though.
Yeah. I don't know which one, really.
Everything's not that cut and dried.
It's not either a career or family or -
But it's what's in the middle.
Am I just going to carry on as I am now for -
And end up on a shelf,
or am I just going to get married, could be any day?
I've been married, and I've not got that urgency.
Glen - we sort of say maybe we will.
We're engaged, you know, we're committed.
We've bought a house together, and to me, that's a big commitment.
Every house needs money spending on it when you move in.
To have a wedding, you gotta put some cash into it.
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?
Well, Glen got with me when -
We got together, I should say, when I was in my 40's,
and you don't have a baby when you've just started a relationship.
I didn't want to do all that again.
I would have loved to have had a baby with him,
because he would make a wonderful parent,
but the timing was off.
So she's your baby?
She's my new baby, yeah.
Yeah, my kids are my babies, but she's my new baby.
She's our baby, mine and Glen's.
She's a wonderful terrier. She's got such character.
What does she do?
Well, she watches TV with us.
She's got her own favourite programs.
And she adores Rolf Harris,
absolutely adores Animal Hospital.
She's at the top of the house, and the music comes on,
she runs down the stairs and puts herself in front of the TV
for Rolf Harris.
So, the house looks nice. You pleased with it?
I am very pleased with it. It's a lovely step for us.
We feel like we've got more space around us,
and we've got to do everything inside,
but we can build on it, and that's what we want.
I've been promising to have a housewarming party since we've moved in.
We've been here four months now,
so I thought it was about time we did that.
So people are just starting to arrive now.
So, you left the East End. Why?
Well, I've always wanted to move out,
but you don't do that, or the opportunity isn't there,
when you are own your own with two kids.
I wish I had done it before. It's timing, you know.
Now was the right time, obviously.
The East End has changed. It's changed a lot.
He was even playing "tie the tooth."
Mum comes down to me. It's so easy for them.
They can jump on a train, and, you know, the station's within walking distance,
so it's worked out wonderfully well.
Some people are just born into rich families, and they're lucky.
I don't see why they should have the luck,
when people have worked all their lives
and haven't got half as much as what they have,
it just don't seem fair.
(Michael) So have you moved up a class now?
That's difficult to say.
Up a class.
Um, I suppose it feels like that to me.
No, there ain't no need for food...
Now you've got the sense of pride, you've got your own house.
I feel like I'm building for the future.
(laughs)
I've been a single parent for a long while.
I've brought them up on my own, really,
because Catherine was only two when Bill left.
It's been extremely hard
and it's been - sometimes it's been very lonely.
I only had to have one filling, right.
That was about the only thing that I had done.
William's - he's a computer addict.
He works in the industry
and he also constantly has a computer on indoors.
He-he could have gone to university,
and he knows that and I know that,
and I do regret that for him.
But I've been there.
I can just remember I didn't want to do that, either.
And Catherine's temping
because she wants to do a bit of traveling next year.
People say she's me reincarnated.
I mean, she looks a bit like me
and her mannerisms are exactly like me,
and she likes to enjoy herself.
To walk into a relationship
with someone who's got two teenagers -
It must have been very difficult for him,
and they do clash occasionally.
I absolutely hate it,
because I'm just an easy-going person
and I don't like strife.
They are doing things the way I've brought them up,
which isn't the way that Glen would like things to be done,
so you've got to learn to live together in the same house.
It will always be a learning curve.
I'm a peacemaker.
When the children were old enough to go to school,
Sue went back to work and had a series of office jobs.
She now helps run the MA courses
in the legal faculty of the university of London.
Still work for the college, but we moved to central London.
Now I am sort of the main administrator for the program
instead of an assistant, you know,
and I've got a couple of people that help me with that.
Could you fax that to Mary for me, please? Thanks.
So you like the responsibility?
Yeah, I love the responsibility.
I think I was born for the responsibility. Yeah, I love it.
Well, I've never been abroad, but -
No, nor have I. I have.
Oh, yeah, 'cause you went on that cruise, didn't you? Yeah.
Once a year we go to Cornwall or Devon.
We try to find a different spot every year,
and we just bring the dog.
It's just such a lovely place.
Every time you turn a corner, there's a different sight,
there's a different -
You just never know what you're going to find.
Everything's just so beautiful.
We'd both had childhood holidays here and good memories,
and we decided to come back,
and we've been coming ever since.
It's nice for us just to be a couple for a week.
When we retire, or maybe before, if we get lucky,
then this is the sort of place we'd like to come to.
That little one there, right in the middle nearest the beach -
That would be ideal, absolute perfect - the perfect place.
(laughs)
Oh, that was good.
Vesto, vestas, vest...
Vestat.
Vestamus, vestatis, vestant.
(man) Here, speak up.
Fill out the gaps on the board there.
When he was seven, Bruce was at a preparatory boarding school.
At 14, St. Paul's in London.
They don't sort of enforce being upper class
and things like that
at St. Paul's, you know.
They suggest that you don't have long hair, and they do get it cut if,
and they teach you to be reasonably well mannered
but not to sniff on the poorer people.
At 21, he was in his last year at Oxford, reading maths.
You can show that this is irreducible.
Then you do a transformation on this polynomial - x equal to t plus 2.
Good. That's a nice way of doing it,
particularly using Eisenstein down here.
His test is very powerful.
(Bruce calling children's names) Yes, sir!
At 28, Bruce was teaching maths
in east London.
Well, I'll go into Africa
and try and teach people who are not civilized
to be more or less good.
At 35, he was teaching in Silet in northern Bangladesh.
And I also got the chance to learn a bit of Bangla, which is very difficult.
Not doing very well at.
(instructor) Bangladesh, Bangladesh. Bangladesh.
Bangladesh.
Before you do anything, you have to make sure...
By 42, Bruce was back in the East End
running the maths department at a girls' school.
After naught hours you can see that it would be 60 litres.
OK, now you want to put this information... (♪ choir singing)
At 49, he's teaching at St. Albans,
a large boys' independent school
which has girls in the sixth form.
I sing in the choir. That happens twice a week.
On Mondays and Fridays we go to the abbey,
because in the early days, the school was in the abbey,
going back to 948.
(Michael) 948?
Yes, so the head quite likes to say
we're in our third millennium, you know.
So the school's over a thousand years old?
Yes, in one form or another.
You have to make x the subject of this equation,
so what's the first thing we do?
Multiply both sides by three. You don't multiply...
Divide. Sorry. Divide by three.
(Michael) Tell me, then, what's exciting about teaching here for you.
There is a higher academic level to teach,
and then you can see pupils at a more developed level,
that flash of recognition
and then engendering their love of the subject
that I had at their age.
There is a class society,
and I think public schools may help its continuance.
So you're in the lead, you see, because...
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 at an inner-city comprehensive.
"Make way, make way.
"This is somebody who's prepared to turn up each day
and do that job."
(Paul) Where's the graph? (girl) 60?
60, right.
So when the tank is full after naught hours...
That motto "Water weareth away a stone
by dripping upon it, not by smashing it"
was, as a motto for teaching, that you kept on teaching them,
and that eventually it would get through,
and the pupils would change and learn and develop and so on.
But I think in the end the reverse happened.
That water dripping on me wore me away.
I just thought, "I don't think I can do this till I'm 60,
and therefore I'll have to do something else."
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're driving a much better car than you used to" and so on.
Well, my girlfriend is in Africa,
And I won't - 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, um...
...Oh, become involved in a family - my own family, for a start.
That's a need that I feel I ought to fulfil
and would like to fulfil and would do it well.
Yes, I haven't got married or whatever,
and I was supposing, you know, that
that would have been something which I hoped had happened.
(Michael) You're getting on a bit. Are you 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, um, 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.
Till death us do part.
Is this a beetroot or something?
I think it's just a weed.
Do you enjoy gardening?
Well, under Penny's directions, you know,
I do whatever she asks me.
I don't know what to do here,
what order to do things in.
She and her mother are quite good at this.
So you're the labourer?
Yes, I'm the unpaid labourer,
the serf,
the feudal vassal or whatever.
Well, Penny will give you the correct medieval terms.
We don't argue very much. Not really.
I mean, we haven't really had a sort of full-blown row.
No, our arguments sort of tend to be two sentences,
and I go off and sulk for 24 hours.
How are you doing, dear? Fine.
And I think the one positive influence on him -
I've stopped him apologizing.
When I first knew him, he kept saying, "Sorry, sorry,"
and apologized for all sorts of things
that there was no need to apologize for.
Maybe it's just 'cause we weren't married then.
Yeah, see, I was winning you over. Yeah, that's right.
You're the world's greatest cook. It's only pasta...
But if you have emotional issues, will you talk about them?
Mm. Well, I have the usual male reticence
about that kind of thing, you know.
Great tea.
If Penny really wanted to give me a hard time,
she'd have to say, "Talk about your feelings."
That would be about -
That would be worse than a 24-hour sulk, you know.
I think so, yeah. I don't know whether...
(Bruce) 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 seeing bringing up, say, teenage children in your 50's
might be a bit strange.
Come on, then, Henry. Get on.
(boys laughing)
(Michael) Is it more tiring than you thought?
(Penny) I don't think until you're doing it
you realize how sleep-deprived you get
and how totally exhausted you are
all the time for several years.
I think that came as rather a shock.
Sometimes I go to bed at 8:30, which is ridiculous.
In fact, I sometimes go to bed before Henry and George.
He looks like his father, doesn't he?
Um, George has got the cheekbones
that run in Bruce's family.
And what have I got?
Uh...
Ooh, that's hard to answer, darling.
(yelling commands)
We're at my first school, where I was from about five to eight,
and this is where I boarded for three years.
Squad, March...
I can remember being happy there.
I can remember also being miserable
because I can remember crying.
Squad, steady!
I always seemed to be beaten, and I never used to understand why.
Squad, halt!
(Michael) You were here because, what -
Your parents were...? My parents were separated and were divorced.
And just to give me a stable place to be and be educated,
it was a solution to all those problems.
My heart's desire is to see my daddy,
who is 6,000 miles away.
I did miss contact with my father, and...
Well, I say it as a joke to Penny, you know,
"Time to send them boarding as I was",
And she says, "Over my dead body", which is -
But I wouldn't want that, either.
Five years ago the family moved away from the East End
to be near Bruce's new school.
It's very quiet, its child-friendly,
and it just feels very safe.
That's really important when you've got small children -
That the area feels safe.
(♪ piano, percussion)
I mean, what can you give them that you didn't have?
Contact with a father that is loving,
and they can realize that
and show that love to other people
and realize when they're letting both themselves and me down.
That could be a sort of guiding light for them.
Do you want any more children?
Well...
Bruce was originally talking about a cricket team.
He's got his opening batsman,
and that I think is going to be his lot, frankly.
I want you to play tomorrow.
I'm not gonna drop you from sarcasm, all right?
I run one of the junior teams here, the under-13's.
And there'll be nearly 200 boys there doing that on a Saturday
rather than other things that could waylay them.
It's that combination of playing within a team
and the ability to back each other up and form friendships
that's such a nice thing.
(clapping) (man) Nice shot.
At weekends, Bruce plays village cricket.
We don't really mind who wins and loses,
we obviously prefer to win, and, you know,
we go on tour every year, so we go down to Devon.
You know, ever such a nice bunch of mates,
and I've known some of them for 25 years.
You can play at a reasonable level till you're in your 60's.
(Michael) And what about your batting skills?
I'm mainly a bit of a slogger,
so I tend to bat down the order, 6, 7, 8.
It can be brief, but the last time I played, I got 50.
Ooh!
Great goin'!
OK, "From their hiding place in the bushes, William and..."
Do you have fears for the future?
Personally I've kind of worried
that the boys will turn out all right.
I hope they avoid drugs.
To see them sleeping
or carry them around is just fantastic,
and just the smell of them and the look of them is just -
You just want to protect them
from everything that's harmful to them.
When you look back at yourself at seven, can we see you now?
I can't really recognize myself.
He looks a little bit lost and a little bit sad,
and I think I'm quite sort of surprised
to be sort of contented and reasonably happy.
Do you have a dream?
Well, I'd have probably liked to have played international cricket,
but I just wasn't good enough.
You know, one's dreams go, and the day-to-day living
of ordinary life and family life takes over.
I think we just sort of Live without our dreams.
(laughter)
I don't like the big boys hitting us
and the prefects sending us out -
Out for nothing.
When he was seven,
Paul was in care in a children's home in London.
(Michael) Were you happy at the children's home in England?
I didn't mind that, really, 'cause 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.
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.
(Michael) What mark has it left on you -
The fact that you were brought up within a bad marriage?
(Paul) The only thing I can say that I think might have come from that
is just my lack of confidence
and being able to show my feelings, really, I suppose.
Would you like to get married, Paul?
No.
Tell me why not.
I don't like, um...
Say you had a wife.
They - they - say you had to eat what they cooked you,
and say - I don't like greens.
Well, I don't.
Oh, no, I 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, you know,
and therefore I want to make sure, I think.
(Michael) What is 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.
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 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... Kids here and there.
I don't think you mean to, but you probably stop thinking about each other a lot.
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, sort of,
"Susan, I love you." something like that.
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,
which tended to affect everything else.
And I was just very fortunate that I saw a local doctor
and with her help, I started coming back to normal thinking, probably.
I mean, I was feeling a little bit worried about the relationship,
because I felt like I hadn't progressed. I was going backwards.
And, I mean, I still believe that.
I was thinking that why would Susan want to be with someone as -
Sounds funny - but as boring as me,
'cause there was nothing there. I mean, what do I do?
How do I say it?
It was a shock that he got that low
and that he doubted the relationship,
because one thing I've always known is
that Paul's never doubted his love for me.
You know, it's always been there,
and I've never doubted it, either.
Did the physical side of your marriage suffer?
I think it did.
I think it did, really. ...For a little while.
We promised ourselves when we first got married
that we'd never stop, you know, touching
or being affectionate towards each other.
And in front of the children, we've always been -
And even now with the children,
we still embrace, a lot, both Katy and Robert. I mean...
Katy will sometimes say, "Mother, stop it."
I was gonna be a policeman, but I thought how hard it would be to join in.
I just haven't made up my mind yet.
I was gonna be a phys ed teacher,
but one of the teachers told me
that you had to get up into university.
At 21, Paul was a junior partner
in a firm of bricklayers.
By 28, he'd gone out on his own as a subcontractor.
I think when I started work for myself,
things were looking good for me,
'cause I was out of school,
something I was very enthusiastic about.
And I was chasing the dangling carrot
but never got there, 'cause, I mean, really,
I'm a worker and not - not a businessman.
By the time he was 42, Paul was doing factory work,
making signs for a plastics company.
What's the future for you at work, do you think?
Well, I mean, the job's still there.
I've had talks with them about whether they were ushering me out the door,
and they say they're not.
Not that I'm that old, but it's a bit of worry
about getting a full-time job with my skill levels.
Sue had been a hairdresser for most of her working life,
but at 49, she has a new career
as an occupational therapist in a retirement home.
(Sue) You might be in your 40's and getting older,
but you still have a lot to add
and you can learn to go in a different direction.
I call this my sea change.
Do you have ambitions?
Not really now.
I've been in this job ten years and never asked for a pay rise.
That's just what I've always been like.
Has it affected home life at all?
(Sue) It has affected a little bit,
because I'm not there at home as much as I used to be
for when Paul got home.
It can be - and I'm sure I'm not the only one -
It can be quite startling. You get home and you think, "There's no one here."
When I've been here for 30 years to be home to.
It's really different.
By the time they were 28,
Paul and Sue had two children -
Katy and Robert.
Katy did well at school
and got a place at university to study archaeology.
They're photos of the dig in Cyprus that I went on.
And we were digging in bronze age tombs
that are around the village.
You're the first person in the family to go to university.
Was it a struggle for you?
It was a bit, because I had to do it all by myself.
I had nobody to really help me,
'cause mum and dad couldn't help me
with my essays or things like that.
What does university mean?
I'm pretty happy with Katy, and I'm not having a go at Rob,
but I've got views for Robert,
'cause he's struggling a little bit.
Robert has trained as a car mechanic.
He's got reading and writing difficulties, and he's coping with that.
We'd like to see him be a little bit more proactive
at doing literacy course now he's a bit older.
But just day-to-day troubles of making ends meet with money -
That's always hard.
He went nuts at me for using the phone,
"No more fucking... You constantly fuckin' do this all the time."
What's Robert got that you gave him?
Moodiness. I think Robert's even a little bit more moody
than what I've ever been.
He's not your average relaxed 21-year-old.
Whatcha doin'?
We only had two children, because we thought
that we couldn't love any more children as much as we loved our two.
Now we've got our two grandchildren. We just love them -
You love them as much, really. As much, yeah.
Yay!
With Rob and Stacey,
we don't really know how long they're gonna last.
I keep my fingers crossed they will last.
We can only hope that they work at it like we do.
That's better. Thank you.
In their 20's,
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,
to actually - which a lot of parents do, you know -
Go camping with them.
We've been camping there now for 19 years,
'cause Robert was two when we first went there.
So does this beat the old van?
This is the Hilton compared to that old van.
Any plans for any big trips now the children have gone?
I think we'd like to do something again,
but you need to have the finances
to support yourself for a few months.
The monitors opened the washroom, sendin' us out.
"Well, there's no talking," and I wasn't talking today.
I'm more at peace around the horses and the animals.
I can be upset, I can be on edge, come down to the horses.
Within three or four minutes of being here, and I've forgotten everything,
so it does calm you down.
(Michael) So last time I came you had the horses.
What's happened to the horses?
Well, we gave Poykin away to some people
because it was a little bit expensive
and also the fun went out of it, basically.
How do you get that peace now?
Well, I think I got it through running.
Well, most Sunday mornings, we go training.
When Paul is doing marathons,
when he's gotta run great distances,
I follow along with the bike as a bit of support
and I take drinks for him so he doesn't get dehydrated.
Something we can do together, so we do that.
We're not doing any great distances, we're just -
I've got an injured knee.
Just trying to build it up so it gets used to running again.
The host city marathon was my first marathon I did up in Sydney.
I trialled the Olympic course, and it was open to anyone.
So I figured if you were gonna do a marathon,
that'd be the one to do.
Nearly died, but I enjoyed it.
Happiness to me is a love for life and a love for people.
When you look back on the marriage and the family,
Any regrets?
No, we wish we'd had more children, but who knows?
If we'd had them, might have gone, "No, too many."
We might be both in the nuthouse.
But without a family, what have you got? Nothing.
Well, that's the way I feel.
More than work, more than achieving...?
Yeah. Like, what you've got,
you've got nothing unless you've got family and your health anyway.
You'd be awfully lonely without family, I think.
(man) Tell me, do you have any boyfriends, Suzy?
Um, yes.
Tell me about him.
He lives up in Scotland, and I think he's 13.
(Michael) Have you got any boyfriends, Susan?
What is your attitude towards marriage for yourself?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I haven't given it a lot of thought,
'cause I am very, very cynical about it.
But then, you know, you get a certain amount of faith restored in it.
I mean, I've got friends, and their parents are happily married,
and so it does put faith back into you,
but me myself, I'm 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.
No, I think 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.
You know, you have -
Everybody has their rows,
but we've never yet had a row
that we haven't managed to sort out.
It's very hard to actually say what it is
that goes on between a couple,
it's either there or it's not.
We've been married 27 years now.
Any marriage has its ups and downs,
but somehow, whether it's through luck or determination,
we've worked through the difficult times.
He's just always been there for me,
and I know I can rely on him.
And, you know, he's my punch bag
in the same way as I'm probably his, but it works.
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?
Oh, I don't like babies.
At 28, Suzy had two sons -
Thomas and Oliver.
By the time she was 35,
Suzy had a daughter Laura.
(boy) Mummy? (Suzy) Yeah?
(Michael) So what are the children up to?
They are - Tom is living in London, having graduated,
and now working and living in London,
Ollie is working and living at home
and Laura is doing her as levels.
It was difficult when they first started to move away -
All those memories of the children growing up.
It's like a closed chapter now,
'cause you can't bring those - bring those days back.
I think what I admire about the young today is their confidence,
and that's what I wished I'd had.
They just seem to take life and deal with it.
(Michael) What sort of things do you do?
Ride, swim, play tennis, ping-pong.
And I might play croquet, anything like that.
(♪ piano)
(Suzy) I did have a privileged childhood,
but you have to take responsibility for your life somewhere along the line,
and some people take responsibility earlier than others.
I was just a bit later taking it.
Maybe now is the first time
that I actually feel happy within my own skin.
It's taken me a long time to do it,
but I actually feel
that I can accept decisions, wrong decisions, possibly,
that I've made in the past,
I am comfortable with it now. I can live with it.
So what's it been like for you being in these films?
Very difficult, very painful.
Not an experience I've enjoyed in any way.
Every seven years, it throws up issues
that I guess we all learn to put into compartments
between the seven years,
and then it all gets opened up again, and it's difficult.
(all talking)
We were all landed in it,
and most of us, have, whatever reason,
chosen to go through with it.
I'm not an outgoing, confident person.
I like my privacy.
I don't like however many million people
picking over my life.
And is that what they do, do you think?
I should think for a couple of minutes, yes, and then it's yesterday's news.
And people seem to read into what they think we all think,
which I find very hurtful, really,
'cause most of them come up with things that they think,
which is nothing like what's going through my head.
Oh, so she might be all right.
What's the point of people sort of going into people's lives
and saying, "Why do you like this?" and, "Why don't you?"
I just don't see any point in it.
So have you had enough of being in the film?
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.
When I grow up, I'd like to find out
all about the moon and all that.
Nick, a farmer's son,
grew up in the Yorkshire Dales.
I said I was interested in physics and chemistry.
Well, I'm not going to do that here.
At 14, he was away at boarding school
and at 21, reading physics at Oxford.
(Michael) So what career are you going to pursue?
(Nick) It depends whether I'll be good enough to do what I want to really do.
I would like, if I can, to do research.
By 28, he had moved to America
and was doing research into nuclear fusion
at the university of Wisconsin.
The fusion reaction gives off energy
and produces the power that would be turned into electrical energy
and sent out to the consumer.
(Michael) How hot is it in there?
In there, it's about 10 million degrees.
At 35, he was an associate professor,
And at 42, a full professor.
And I've spent the last year and a half writing a couple of books.
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 gonna happen.
Over the years, Nick's research hit trouble,
and by 49, he's had to abandon it,
because the containers needed to store the hot gasses couldn't be developed.
(Michael) Was there a moment when you realized that all you'd been doing
wasn't going to work out?
I think it was more gradual.
I didn't want to admit it for quite a while.
I mean, I really believed in it. It was a huge let-down.
So the area that I'm looking at is this times this.
I don't know why I've a compulsion to teach, really.
It was always there in me. I wanted to do it. I thought I'd be good at it.
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.
So I'm hoping that you remember me being very stupid
and going, "Ow, there's arrows coming out of here."
Can we do that? Any chance of that?
They can get information from a book.
I have to keep them awake and make the information a bit more interesting
than a book.
I'm doomed to do this over and over and over.
OK, well, I didn't even know it was happening,
so it was interesting...
Nobody's ever said that I was a typical engineer.
The undergraduates tell jokes about engineers,
and the only one I can repeat to you
is, "How you can tell if an engineer is an extrovert?"
And the answer is, "He looks at your shoes when he's talking to you."
Even though he's clearly a megastar, it's like...
Somebody came up with a theory recently
that a lot of scientists and mathematicians
are just borderline autistic.
I could easily be borderline autistic, you know.
I don't quite get how other people feel about things sometimes, you know.
(Michael) Do you have a girlfriend?
I don't want to answer that.
I don't answer those kind of questions.
I thought that one would come up because when I was...
When I was doing the other one,
and 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?
I thought so. Um...
The best answer would be to say
that I don't answer questions like that,
but, I mean, it was what I said when I was seven,
and it's still the most sensible. What about them?
Nick was only 17 when I first met him.
If he'd been somebody who had had fixed ideas of a woman's role in marriage
that meant dinner on the table at six every evening...
Ah, didn't I tell you about that?
His wife Jackie also taught at the university,
and they had a son Adam.
Six years ago, they divorced.
Well, it was incredibly hard.
What I concluded,
and I have 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 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."
It wasn't my decision.
She went to England. Her father was ill.
By the time she'd landed, he had died,
and when she came back,
it was like a different person came back.
Was I responsible?
I could have been braver about some things,
but if I'd been braver, it might have ended sooner.
You can talk to me by myself outside,
but I'll just meet you by the garage, ok?
All right, bye.
It's enormously hard to deal with.
The worst part of it was seeing how it would affect my son.
(Michael) How old was he?
Ten.
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.
He's made the most of it - I mean, the best of it.
Made the best that he can of it, I guess.
Take it easy, Adam. Main thing is not to crash.
Really? You don't want me to crash right now?
(Michael) How does he deal with it now?
He doesn't talk to me about it very much at all.
He's a private person.
It's very, very hard for me
to be spending a large part of my time with him not around.
Hi, Graham. What you doing?
I had to go to a graduation.
One of my students was getting his Ph.D.,
and he insisted I go there with him,
and I looked around, and the person behind me was Chris...
Hey, Graham.
...who is my new wife.
Are you ok?
(Michael) Did you fall in love quickly?
Immediately.
Except that you decided that if I couldn't find you, I'd failed the test.
I decided it was his work to find me.
We did shake hands at the end of graduation,
stood up and said who we were, but he immediately forgot.
He couldn't remember who I was.
"I know who she is,
so I don't have to worry about this anymore."
So I forgot. I do - that's very me.
She came down to the student union to meet me,
And, you know, I barely knew what she looked like.
I looked at her... "I guess that's her,"
And I sort of looked and did this, and she did the same.
She did a mirror image of that gesture,
and I thought, "I can't explain what that was,"
But I just felt
very strongly drawn to her by that little gesture.
And there was no way I would say no
to being married to this man.
I wanted to be with him.
Has he changed my life? Dramatically.
Have I changed as a person? I hope so.
You'll give them a push?
I don't mean to be superficial,
but I think she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
(Michael) Is he sexy?
Oh, man... (laughs)
Absolutely.
Didn't you have fun with that one?
Graham was very good about the ducks. The ducks were...
I only have one child, Courtney, and he only has one child.
There's a symmetry with that.
(Michael) Would you ever have wanted a child of your own, the two of you?
Well, absolutely,
but it's not exactly practical, so we're just...
No. Of course, Graham has added an element that's just joy,
And I know Nick likes little guys. He just likes little kids.
They'd like to come out for a holiday in the country
when we like - when I like to have a holiday in the town.
It is very difficult being in a place
where you're a long way away from all your background,
and you don't have any sort of support network.
(chatter)
My parents are alive.
They both had very significant health issues.
My father keeps pointing out that old age isn't for sissies.
You need a secretary.
Nick has two younger brothers back in England -
Andrew and Christopher.
Christopher, the deaf one, got divorced,
and he reported to my mother that if Nicky can do it, then so can I,
so that changed.
(Michael) Are you missing England?
I always miss England.
I was really not the sort of person
who should ever have moved very far.
When he was 42,
we took Nick back to where he had grown up in the Dales.
What did you learn here, do you think, that you carried with you?
I sort of feel as if you could look deep somewhere inside me,
I feel like there's some of this in there somewhere.
I think of it as being magnificent but rather grim, really.
It's very uncompromising, and sometimes it's rather tragic,
but, you know, it makes other places you go
seem rather trivial as well.
We call it one of our Dales rooms.
We have things that reflect the Dales in the room,
we have cards that we framed,
and some of the china from Nick's family
is displayed up here.
Well, we're driving from Madison to Minneapolis,
'cause Chris lives in Minneapolis, and I live in Madison,
so we go up and down alternate weekends.
(Michael) Does it put a stress on the relationship,
these separations and reuniting?
I would say, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder, really.
Chris lives in Minneapolis,
a five-hour drive from Madison,
where she is an associate professor in the department of education.
Hey, you want to see something?
(Michael) Work is a big part of both your lives, isn't it?
It is.
Yeah, so we're both kind of workaholics.
Is there anything that you would like to change?
Oh, that would be really risky business, wouldn't it?
Well, I thought you had changed a few of them, no?
You know, you don't mess with mother nature
in terms of little things,
like how somebody does their toothpaste,
those silly nonsense things.
He would not just say yes, he immediately attended to it.
I had never been with anybody who did,
so you have to be really careful with what you ask him to do.
Oh, go easy on the butter, please, all right?
OK.
I mean, I could see it being a slippery slope, you know.
I didn't want to go that way
in terms of my ordering his life...
I didn't want him to be a different person.
If I can change in the world, I'd change it into a diamond.
I think this film is extremely important.
It's important to me, but it seems to be important to other people as well.
That doesn't make it an easy thing.
It's an incredibly hard thing to be in,
and I can't even begin to describe how emotionally draining and wrenching it is
just to make the film and to do the interviews,
and that's even when I am pretending
that nobody else is watching it.
(barks)
I think it's a heavy reminder that he's missing his roots.
I mean, there are an awful lot of emotions attached
to having a scrapbook that's as vivid as this.
I'm going to work in Woolworth's.
(TV playing)
Lynn is the third of our east end girls.
She went to primary school with Jackie and Sue,
but chose to go on to a grammar school.
At 21, she set out on a career
as a children's librarian in a mobile library in east London.
Have I stamped yours? Yes.
I've not stamped yours. Sleeping beauty.
Teaching children the beauty of books
and watching their faces as books unfold to them
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 library.
You can draw, better than I can.
Good morning.
At 49, she's still there.
Good morning. (boy) What about you?
Good morning.
(woman) Are you going to say hello? Good morning.
(Michael) How much of your work is with people like this?
Probably 5%. It's a very, very small part of it,
But probably, currently, the most challenging part of it.
Elephant.
He's an elephant. Where's the elephant?
We still get six other schools regularly send classes in here.
It's busy most days.
Well, I know he loves her, and he loves her.
I don't. I love him.
I've been married a year in a couple of months.
You do think, "Christ, what have I done?"
When she was 19, she married Russ.
We married young,
but because we wanted to go out and have fun together.
30 years, and we're still together.
He's my soul mate, he's my partner.
We respect each other,
hence he's not here, and you will not see him on this film,
because he has always, always felt
that the intrusion into our private life that this causes
is too much.
I wanted white wedding, all trimmings,
and Russ would've been satisfied with very little.
(Michael) Are you in love?
Very, very much.
He knows how much I love him,
and in my heart of hearts, I know how much he loves me.
I put him on the spot sometimes.
If I could, I would have two girls and two boys.
(Jackie) Yeah, so would I.
Lynn and Russ have two daughters - Sarah and Emma.
Emma's installation coordinator for a window company.
Sarah is an accessories buyer. It's a family-run business.
At 42, the girls
were both doing very well at school.
Neither of the girls went to university?
No, 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.
You have to accept that it's their lives,
and you can only guide and be there for them.
Aw, you boy. Where's your drink?
So you got a grandson?
He's a lovely lad, he really is.
I'm watching him in the same way.
I mean, from 21 years ago, when I held Sarah up
When she was just born, and now I am watching Emma now,
and what goes round, comes round,
because Emma now says that she says things to Connor
that she can hear me saying to her.
Rabbits.
Yeah. You have to look out for their holes.
That still catches me out sometimes
when suddenly I say something that was purely and utterly me mum.
So was the arrival of Connor a shock to you?
No. Well, yeah, but, no.
I mean, as soon as Emma was expecting Connor,
Got the phone call - "Mum, need to meet you."
So she actually told me face to face that she was expecting. Fine.
She was 19. She's old enough.
Probably watching you. You'll go to bed.
When she was 35, Lynn was having health problems.
Stuck all these tubes up inside me and discovered
that I've got these veins up here that shouldn't be there.
In your brain?
Mm-hmm.
And what can they do about it?
Not a lot at the moment.
No change.
It's not going away, but it's no more problems.
Nothing, and I, mean,
you have the aches and pains of getting older.
I've got bilateral carpal-tunnel syndrome in both my wrists.
Guess who had it. My mother.
And that comes and goes, hence magnetic bracelets,
which help, but you have to overcome it.
What's white? Red.
Yeah, we know that's red.
For the last 30 years,
bang my head against a brick wall
to maintain children's services,
but this time round, no one's listening.
We've just done purple.
They say that the work that I do that anybody can do it.
Blue.
There would be no specialist running it.
One.
I may not have a job.
Hern loves Tintin.
Hern absolutely adores Tintin.
It's cost cutting.
So that's what it's about? Yeah.
They would deny that.
Can you speak to me today?
No?
I see.
Is it emotionally very demanding
working like this with people like this?
Yeah, but it's so fulfilling
that, uh - beyond belief.
Azir, can you say it for me? I know you can.
But are you get - no! (laughs)
No, you're not gonna do it today.
Azir spoke to me on the phone a couple of years ago.
First time he'd ever spoken to me, and really got me.
It's extremely difficult for him to speak,
and when he does, you know he's making so much effort,
and it gets me.
Hello. Hello.
Excellent.
Thank you, Azir. Thank you.
You've come a long way since the back of the van.
No. I was on the back of a bus yesterday.
We took a mobile vehicle out to a school
who was having a book week just round the corner,
and I had forgotten how much it sways.
Where's your stamp?
Been a hell of a commitment for you, hasn't it?
Yeah, but...
...But it will end.
But has it been worth it all?
Yeah, very much.
Come on, speed it up.
All these things that I have said over the years
are flying through my mind at the moment, but, yes, it has been worth it.
And you better cut it, 'cause otherwise, I'm gonna cry.
(man) What do you think about rich people?
Well, not much.
Tell me about them.
Well, they think they can do everything without you doing it as well.
Simon was brought up in a children's home,
the only child of a single parent.
Rich people, they have all different things.
Have everything they want.
Whereas poor people, they don't have nothing,
and they know they haven't got nothing,
and so they know they're missing something.
(Michael) What are you missing?
I'm missing a bike
and a fishing rod and...
20 years ago, when I was born,
an illegitimate child,
that's something that's only whispered about.
People, you know, feel strongly about it in those days,
but nowadays, it's... It's not a serious matter.
The serious point is 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 5 children.
I don't think there's anybody else I could have ever married except Yvonne.
She's been my life, really, because we're together,
we have our children and everything.
By 35, they were divorced.
At 42, he had married Vienetta.
We used to go out when we were younger. We met in the launderette.
Once a week. Once a week at the launderette.
Baked beans.
Go and get the water and...
At one stage, we went to marriage guidance,
'cause the pressures of being together
were getting to us because we are two completely different people.
I'm very laid back,
and she always says
if I go any further back, I'll fall over.
When two people are together
and they have both have separate lives,
it is hard, and there are silly things,
like leaving the toilet seat up or something
or when I put something here, I expect to see it there.
Simon can be really untidy.
He'll take everything off and fling it around the house.
Sorry, dear.
Don't get it all mixed up.
(Michael) Is he romantic?
If we've had an argument, and he doesn't know,
'cause I will shout, and he'll think, "What have I done?"
And I'll be here, like now, and I'll be here, and I'd see him with flowers
and a bottle of wine or something,
and he'll say, "I'm sorry. I don't know what I done, but I'm sorry."
Vienetta already had a daughter, Miriam,
and she and Simon have a son - Daniel.
Is there anything of you in him?
His dashing good looks, yeah.
That's me and his love of sport as well.
He goes to school in Slough,
because that's where they do grammar schools.
He's doing very well there.
They say, "Where's your father?"
"When your mum's out at work, is there your father?"
And I just tell them I ain't got one.
They've got everything.
They've even got what I never had.
Which is what?
A father, innit, so, I mean, they've had everything.
At one stage, they will stop seeing me at all,
but now, bit older, bit wiser,
and I'm a bit older and wiser, and now three of them see me.
Jessica has been very busy herself.
She's got her work, she's got college.
So who do you support?
Your lot comes second.
Jonathan's been in transitional period
with changing jobs and building up his new life.
The two that don't, I can't really see their point of view.
So what's it like being a grandfather?
Oh, it's bloody easy, actually.
You can see them all day long and then let them go back.
And you've got one?
Two, actually.
One that I see
and one that I would only see if I kept going round to see him.
Otherwise, I wouldn't see him, so I am waiting for the return visit now.
Before I'm old enough to get a job,
I'd 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, really.
By 21, Simon was working in the freezer room
of Walls Sausages in London.
I know I can't stay at Walls forever.
This is just not me.
I couldn't stay there for that long.
My mind would go dead.
I'm quite happy to stay there.
Doesn't look like it's going to close down,
so, I mean, better the devil you know, innit?
Walls did close the factory down.
Since then he has worked near Heathrow airport handling freight.
The only reason I really went there
was to work near to where my son was going to school, so I could drop him off.
Do you feel you could have done more with a career with your work?
If I had 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.
Somebody once said that you don't live to work,
you work to live, and that's how it should be.
(woman) Obviously when children come into foster care,
family and friends are involved...
A couple of years ago, Simon and Vienetta
decided to train as foster parents.
Went to boarding school when I was young,
and I always felt that was regimental.
It didn't allow for personal care,
for loving from the adult carers,
so I wanted to do something like that for myself,
you know, in my own home.
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, really, when you do it,
'cause you don't - you really don't know what you're getting.
One child had two knives in her hands,
because she didn't want to stay in this country.
Two knives in her hands.
She threatened you?
No. She was just a threat to herself.
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.
At least you know you've made a little difference
to that child or that person's life.
Obviously we have Heathrow in our borough,
and that gives us extra things that foster carers might need to do.
So where are these children coming from that come to your house?
Oh, all over the world. So anywhere. Anywhere.
When they come off the plane, they expected to be meeting somebody,
but that person doesn't turn up.
Simon. How you doing?
Simon had been at the children's home with Paul,
so we brought Paul back from Australia to reunite them.
Was it good, though? Yeah.
You can see Windsor Castle from their house.
Look at that.
We don't actually see each other, touch each other,
but we're living each other's lives.
Every seven years, it all comes back, and this -
We get up to this far, and we've done this, and you've done that, and...
When they were 21,
we took them back to where they had spent some of their formative years together.
Remember him? Yeah.
He was a real bastard.
I do try to be disciplined,
but I actually hate discipline.
I believe the school has taught me that.
There's always been a bit of turmoil inside.
I believe that divorce affects children a lot.
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.
When he was 35,
Simon's mother died of cancer.
There was so many things I never actually said to my mum,
just things 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.
Later on in life, I did realize that she got depressed as well,
so that was probably a bigger reason
than not being able to look after me.
My mother wrote to me when I was 21,
and I hadn't really had any contact with her.
When I was 21, she come out and visited,
but I did grow up without her,
so it was like looking at a total stranger.
I didn't recognize her at all,
so there was no real in-depth feeling there.
Paul, get in there next to him as well.
Come on, let me get you organized.
(Michael) Are these two guys very alike?
I think they're alike, because they don't seem to jump into things.
They'll stand back and have a little look at it.
You make them enjoy themselves,
like when we went for a walk around London yesterday,
I said, "You are coming, and you are having a good time doing this,"
And he did have a good time doing it, so...
They're both very family-orientated,
and they both married noisy women. That's true.
(laughter)
That works for me.
I had one dream
when all the world was on top of me,
and everything was on,
and I just about got out, and everything flew up in the air.
I still look up in the sky, because I don't know any better.
Everything I have, I always think,
"Is that ok? Is that right that I should have that?"
People are undecided about you.
They could be your friend one day and not the next.
I wanted to be a boxer, actor,
but I never actually really wanted them.
I just wanted to be liked.
Paul actually gets - that's all he ever wants out of people
is just people to like him for who he is and what he is
without having to put on any false pretences.
I think that's why he doesn't open himself up to people.
Hello, darling.
Hello.
(Michael) Do you have any regrets, the two of you?
(Vienetta) Yes, I do.
That we didn't get together earlier.
I think marriage is good for me.
What does she give you?
Hot dinners and a warm bed.
(stammers and chuckles)
Uh, she gives me a balance in my life,
because... On my own,
I would probably be your typical slob.
Men behaving badly.
We do get things done, and we do things together.
'Cause you multiplied before, so now you divide...
Is it tough for the two of you being in these films?
I will say that I do love watching everybody else.
I always hated them, to be honest.
By the end of it, I normally hate you.
Direct all of my anger in one place. (laughs)
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 it.
(all singing)
At seven years old, John, Andrew and Charles
were in a private preparatory school in London.
What's the point of the program?
It's that the point of the program is to reach a comparison.
I don't think it is,
because we're not necessarily typical examples.
And I think that's what people seeing the program might think.
Yes. Falsely.
That's one of the troubles with this sort of program.
I don't really think that people like us -
Unless we are being seven and being rather funny -
Have very much to say that's very interesting,
'cause... We don't know very much.
We didn't know very much when we were seven,
but we were still quite funny.
(Michael) 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 the other half of the community, and they're there.
You can begin to talk to them.
I don't think I financially come from the same background,
and Andrew didn't go for a haughty deb,
he went for a good Yorkshire lass,
But, I mean, obviously he knew what he wanted.
(Michael) 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 still love him, if that's what you're asking.
And likewise. (laughs)
I am going to charterhouse,
and after that, Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Andrew went to Charterhouse and Cambridge, where he read law.
I'd like to be a solicitor and also fairly successful.
At 28, Andrew was a solicitor.
What qualities do you think it needs to be successful?
Well, you have to have a legal ability in my business, obviously.
By 35, he had become a partner.
In a couple of weeks, we are going to be having our legal conference in Dublin.
At 49, Andrew has left the law firm.
I've moved to a large industrial gasses company
which makes oxygen and nitrogen, hydrogen, things like that.
Were you taking a chance?
Yes. I've been at the same firm for over 20 years,
but it's not very challenging,
and changing like this,
particularly quite late in your career, sort of stretches you.
I think it's not a bad idea to pay for school,
because if we didn't,
schools would be so nasty and crowded.
Yes.
So do I think so, and the people in the schools wouldn't -
And the people - poor people would come rushing in.
The man in charge of the school would get very angry,
because he would... And he'd get bankrupt.
...He wouldn't be able to pay all the masters
if he didn't get any money.
Education is very important.
I mean, you can never be sure
of leaving your children 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.
Andrew and Jane have two sons -
Alexander and Timothy.
Alexander's at university.
He's in his first year at Newcastle, and Timothy's at boarding school.
I think he'd like to go to university,
but I think that's as far as he's got, really.
Maybe even over the summer holidays, we might start to talk to him about,
are there any universities he would like to go and look at?
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 all except for manure,
and then, slowly over the years, we've just been converting it,
but it's really taken us up until fairly recently to do that.
Ollie, come on.
There's a railway line that runs along the bottom of our land.
There's a foxes' den down there. We've been seeing a few cubs recently.
(Michael) What sort of hobbies does Alexander enjoy?
Well, on the odd occasion,
he's quite keen on doing what we call dangerous sports.
And we're going to treat him to a balloon ride
sort of in advance of his birthday,
which is coming up soon.
(man) Here we go. See you all.
See you later.
I have actually been in a balloon once myself.
It was for my father's birthday,
and it was all going very well until the end,
when we managed to hit some trees and...
Don't tell me that now.
We landed on the basket. We landed on its side.
(Alexander) It's very high. Very high.
When we landed, there was a request that...
All the ladies go downwind
so that we could land on top of them.
Once I had a talk to Greville.
He was in my house, and I asked
if he could put him out of my house,
because he was always getting minuses.
(Michael) Do you think life is tougher out there for your children
than it was for you?
Yes, certainly I think it's much more competitive for children.
When I leave this school, I go to Broadstairs, St. Peter's court.
If you look back at us sitting on the settee at the age of seven,
and I was saying what I going to do, as if my life was mapped out for me.
Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
You know, you could never get a child doing that now,
saying, "I'm going to go to Cambridge."
Things have become less certain as a result.
And you three on that settee had huge opportunity.
We did. Absolutely, yeah.
Well, I think boarding makes you feel self-sufficient
and also teaches you to be away from your parents and to live with people.
And who was the big influence in your life
in giving you a sense of proportion and value?
Well, obviously it's your parents.
You know, they bring you up for the first 18 years of your life.
Well, I have my bath at 6:00 and then...
Do you ever look back and think
is there anything you would like to have been different from what it was?
I think, from my point of view, perhaps,
as the children were growing up,
I would liked to have spent a bit more time at home with them
rather than in the office, but that's something that it's too late to do now.
So everything we say, they'll think,
"Oh, that's a typical result of the public-school system."
When we were 7 and 14 and 21,
we were fairly prepared to say what we thought,
but we have become more guarded over the years.
What are you guarded about?
I'm guarded about being guarded.
Here we go. Ooh.
(Michael) So did you ever fall on the ladies?
No. The lady fell on me.
But it was my wife, so that was good.
(both laugh)
When I leave school, I am going to the dragon school -
I might - and mum is, and I might go -
After, I might go to Charterhouse, Marlborough.
I don't particularly want to be rich, but I'd like to have enough money.
Charles went to Marlborough
and then onto Durham University.
Since 21, he's taken no further part in these films.
When I leave this school, I'm going to Colet 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 onto read law at Christ Church, Oxford.
I'm thinking of following a legal career
with a view to ending in parliament.
Might be at the bar.
(Michael) 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 am now a QC.
(Michael) Are you ambitious?
Yes.
What for?
Fame and power.
What sort of power?
Political power.
I would quite like to go into politics,
but, I mean, that's easier said than done.
I have actually thought about whether I shouldn't try
and get myself onto the candidates' list,
but who knows?
I haven't written myself off as a potential politician,
even though I am already 49.
I worry about the quality of our democracy.
I worry in particular about this government,
not because they're socialists and they're to round us all up
and take us off to Trafalgar Square in tumbrels
to face the guillotine.
Far from it.
In fact, Tony Blair is a very good conservative, as I see it,
but rather because of the insidious damage
they're doing to our constitution.
Rich children always make fun of poor children, I think.
It's very irresponsible,
because we all want more money, as much money as we can get.
The acquisition of sacks and sacks of money
is not something that I set much importance by.
I'm not money-minded, I would say, in that sense.
I mean, obviously it's nice to have a fair amount of money,
and money does enable you to go on nice holidays,
buy nice things,
so on and so forth, but as a goal in itself, no.
I mean, who wants to be the richest corpse in the graveyard?
By the time he was 35,
John had a house in London and another in the country.
I seem to spend an awful lot of my time gardening furiously,
trying to tame the wilderness that we inherited there.
I'd have laughed if, ten years ago, you'd have told me
that I would spend most of my time
digging herbaceous borders and things,
but that's what I seem to do, and I enjoy it.
One good thing about having quite a large house in the country now
is that I have taken up playing the piano.
It's a very nonchalant little theme,
butter wouldn't melt in its mouth,
so take it very quietly and let it present itself. Off.
A couple of years ago, I did start again and even practicing,
but I am afraid I've lost an awful lot of dexterity.
Whether it's old age and arthritis,
or whether it's falling off horses too many times,
I don't know, but, I mean, I don't feel I've got quite the dexterity in my fingers.
Certainly I can never tell the difference between you playing
and the CD playing when I'm out of the room.
Yeah, very good, very good.
Well, she's very diplomatic. No, no.
When boys go round with girls, they don't pay attention to what they're doing.
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.
(speaking Bulgarian)
We have a charity, friends of Bulgaria,
which started in 1991,
which actually made quite a lot of money
which we invested in medicine and took out to Bulgaria.
We support some children's homes in Starazagora,
an institution for disabled children,
and we make donations to other charities.
People who 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've been told that in some places,
it's impossible to do even operations,
albeit they have the operating theatres
and they have excellent doctors, for want of simple anaesthetics.
Up till then, there'd been no provision
for education of disabled children,
so we started what was called a paralleca,
which is parallel education for the disabled,
and we've now got two classes here.
My name Deanna.
Cristo Christoff.
Claire and I have been giving prizes
to the most talented children in this town.
The school that we're in
was actually built by my family at the end of the 19th century.
And they also used to present prizes
to the best children from the school each year
right until the advent of communism in 1944.
I come from a very old family
with big traditions of service to this country,
and, really, when I come here,
I feel very proud of them,
because I feel, in so many ways, they've helped build Bulgaria.
This church is quite interesting.
It was built by
my great-great-great grandfather in 1835.
They say he made off with 8 tons of gold,
and even today,
the mountains here are full of treasure hunters
who keep digging up all the caves and everything
in the hope of finding the treasure.
I wish I could find it.
I mean, once I'd refunded my equitable life pension fund,
I reckon if I shoot the horses, shoot the wife
and only drink Bulgarian wine,
I may be able to retire age 94 or something.
Straw Macanessy got three minuses in a day.
He's a pest.
It has to be said that I bitterly regret
that the headmaster of the school where I was when I was seven
pushed me forward for this series,
'cause every seven years,
a little pill of poison is injected into - (Claire) Oh, no.
Well, it's the truth.
There are times when I have felt appearing on this
may get causes near to my heart a bit of publicity
and certainly when you came to Bulgaria for the 35Up program,
that did lead to us getting quite significant assistance,
which possibly we wouldn't have got.
Well, I think it's a very good system.
I suspect that why this program
is compelling and interesting for viewers,
and I quite see why it is, is because, really,
it's like big brother or I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!
It is actually real-life TV
and with the added bonus that you can see people grow old,
lose their hair, get fat.
Fascinating, I'm sure, but does it have any value?
That's a different question.
Well, we pretend we've got swords,
and we make the noise of the swords fighting,
and once somebody stabs us, we go, "Ahhhh."
Neil grew up in a Liverpool suburb.
He 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, he was working on a building site
and living in a squat.
I would like to be somebody in a position of importance,
I have always thought,
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."
By 28, he was homeless,
wandering around the west coast of Scotland.
If the money runs out, well, then, for a few days, there's nowhere to go to,
and that's all you can do.
I simply have to find the warmest shed I can find.
(Michael) How do people regard you here?
Well, I'm still known as an eccentric.
I'm not claiming that I feel as though
I am in some sort of nirvana,
but I am claiming that if I was living in a bedsit in suburbia,
I'd be so miserable, I'd feel like cutting my throat.
At 35, we found him living in a council estate
on the most northerly part of Britain -
The Shetland Islands.
It's an environment which sustains me,
it's one in which I can survive.
The reason I don't feel safe
is because I think I am getting more and more used to this lifestyle,
which, eventually, I shall have to give up.
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?"
Um...
What are you likely to be doing?
That's a horrible question.
I tend to think the most likely answer
is that I'll be wandering homeless
round the streets of London,
but with a bit of luck, that won't happen.
Can I just point out some of the considerable disadvantages?
First of all, they are geographically...
By 42, Neil had moved to London
and was a liberal democrat on Hackney Council.
While I was in Shetland, I felt very strongly
that I should become involved in politics,
simply because I felt I was not achieving anything
in the ways I really - I really wanted to.
(Michael) So, didn't expect to see you driving, Neil.
Well, neither - if you'd asked me that question a few years ago,
I would have been surprised,
but it was my brother's wife's car,
and fortunately, she was about to change vehicles at the time,
and they let me have it without charge,
which was really a very magnanimous gesture.
At 49, Neil has left London,
moved to Cumbria in the north west of England
and become a member of the local district council.
(man) ...Fairly simple.
It was a committee decision, majority decision.
His own group on the establishment committee agreed with the decision.
Councillor Hughes.
Well, for councillor Niland's information -
Councillor Cook has reconsidered his opinion he ventured at that meeting.
I'm a liberal democrat,
I'm standing for the county council for this seat,
which is 400 square miles in size,
so it's a huge, a huge constituency,
and this is only one of the 84 seats.
Who has the seat at the moment?
It's a conservative councillor at the moment.
Big majority?
Significant. There's a lot of work for me to do,
if not this time, maybe next time.
What are the chances this time?
I'm doing my best.
Funnily enough, when I first came up here,
I was considering giving it up altogether,
but after only about two days, I just got involved again,
so maybe it's impossible to give up politics.
I have a great deal of respect for the liberal democrats,
but I think that I won't vote for them this time,
because I'll vote for Mr. McClain.
And in particular, he's keen on to preserve our way of life
in the country with hunting, in particular.
Well, it's going to very disadvantage us
because we have changed our farming policy
since foot and mouth or any type of dairy cows.
Certainly more people vote. Perhaps they see the impact on their lives more starkly
than people do in the city.
I found in London, many parts of London,
there was a huge apathy because it seemed -
Like they used to say,
"It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in."
When I saw you seven years ago,
you seemed content, happy in London, so why the change?
I neither felt that I was satisfying the community around me,
nor did I feel I was satisfying myself,
and that was obviously not an ideal situation.
At 42, when Neil first arrived in London from the Shetland Islands,
he lodged with Bruce.
He was a model host,
although he did always insist on measuring
the amount of bathwater that was in the bath,
and I am not quite sure why that was.
He'd find the fridge a bit noisy, so he would turn it off,
or if I had to hoover, he'd walk round the block or...
No, I accept that I wasn't the model lodger in every way,
and, however, that only emphasizes how patient you actually were.
I've had little contact with Bruce.
We've exchanged one or two letters,
but maybe ours was a friendship which flourished -
And it was a genuine friendship -
In the circumstances in which we found ourselves in London.
I think that's what happens in life,
that people you're close to, and then circumstances drift you apart,
and you find other people,
and you wonder now and again what's happening to them
and hope they're all right, but that's what happens in life.
In the winter, if you lived in the country,
well, it was just all wet, and there wouldn't be anything for miles around.
I feel, especially sometimes when I'm on my own,
that I'm losing touch with the way other people live.
(Michael) Do you worry about your sanity?
Other people sometimes worry about it.
Like who?
As I said, I sometimes can be found
Behaving in an erratic fashion.
Sometimes I get very frustrated, very angry
for no apparent reason,
for a reason which won't be apparent to other people around me.
Do you ever think you're going mad?
I don't think it. I know it.
I, uh... Well, 'cause...
We're not allowed to use the word "mad," but, um...
I think most people are mad here, really.
How's your health?
It's probably very good at the moment,
and living in this rural setting
is obviously healthier than living in the middle of a city.
There is less stress.
I ended up with a former council flat,
which is nothing luxurious, but I was lucky to get it,
and as soon as I could see the view out of my window,
across the stream and trees and the hills in the background,
I knew I was in the right place.
I know that many people
say they feel closer to god in the countryside.
I wouldn't want to be simplistic about it,
but because one is much closer to natural life,
one's therefore much closer to the springs of life.
Yes, I'd say I believed in god. Are you religious?
Well, I go to church with me 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.
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 see him in my life.
♪ My Jesus
♪ My saviour
♪ Lord, there is none like you
♪ Tower of refuge and strength...
I bring Jim and Ann
and Bruce and Julia
and, uh... Doreen.
...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 Carlisle.
Nature's lovely, nature's made by god, but it's lovely...
Gives me the peace of mind to accept when things
don't go the way they want to.
Politics can be a very bruising game.
I will maintain my faith, I will continue to trust in god.
I'm absolutely sure that my faith
has helped me through these difficult times.
Would you ever see having a career in the church?
While I have a dedication to the church,
I haven't experienced what I'd call a calling into the priesthood
or anything of that kind,
so the answer is no at the moment.
When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut,
but if I can't be an astronaut, I think I'll be a coach driver.
If the state didn't give us any money,
it would probably just mean crime,
and I am glad I didn't have to steal to keep myself alive.
Neil spends one day a week
doing voluntary work for Oxfam.
Bernard, can you tell me why people keep putting non...
I enjoy doing this. It's relaxing.
I love books, and I enjoy the company here as well.
I'd much rather have a full-time job where I was being paid,
but because of the council work I do,
I really want a job in the rest of my time that isn't too stressful.
Well, these are all 6.99 new,
so I am putting them in at 1.99.
I get just over £200 a month allowance for being a councillor.
On top of that, I get £9 a week jobseekers' allowance,
and because I am entitled to the jobseekers' allowance,
I get my housing benefits as well, which pays my rent.
I did some teaching of French to young children last year for a while,
and that was very useful income while I did it.
When I go home,
I come in, and mummy gives me a cup of tea.
I don't think I was really taught
any sort of policy of living at all by my parents.
This is probably the biggest mistake.
I was just left to fend for myself in a world
which they seem completely oblivious of.
What I'd like most of all would be...
Would be to be able to do something for my parents
when they're older,
to be there when...
when the time's necessary.
Well, my father died five years ago.
I do feel, however,
that I'm a little nearer to my mother since then,
but both geographically and possibly emotionally,
it's never been an easy relationship,
and I am not claiming that everything is healed now,
but I feel I can speak to my mother.
Do you miss your dad?
I - I had a great relationship with my father
when I was much younger.
My relationship with him
did deteriorate as I got older.
I sometimes felt that he made the wrong decision
in advice he'd given me or things he'd done,
but then, obviously, he had his own life to lead,
and just a few months before he died,
we went together to a cricket match.
Well, we had what I knew would probably be the last long talk we would have
because he was dying at the time then,
and I felt that we were both relaxed
because we were doing something we enjoyed doing,
which was relaxing in the sunshine and watching sport,
so I felt that some way of -
some bridging of the gap did take place that day.
When I get married, I don't want to have any children,
because they are always doing naughty things
and making the whole house untidy.
I always told myself
that I would never have children.
Why?
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 stand a very fair chance
of being not totally full of happiness
because of what he or she will have inherited from me.
No, I've never married, and I don't have a girlfriend at the moment,
and I've - it's one of the regrets of my life, actually,
that I've not met somebody of the other sex
I thought I could have a more permanent relationship with,
but - but I am probably not
the easiest of people to get on with.
I did have one girlfriend for close on two years,
so maybe I'm not as completely hopeless a character
as might appear to be the case.
Do you miss a physical side, a sexual side in your life?
Well, I am a physical person,
so I imagine I could be happy
in a lasting relationship with somebody,
but you have to make do with the reality,
and there are many things that might have happened in my life
that haven't happened,
and there is little point in being regretful
and angry about that.
You seem to have such much stronger sense of purpose to your life
than you've had before.
I see that life comes once,
and it's quite short,
and you have to appreciate what's good in it,
and if I could just tell a short story.
I was just sunbathing and I - a butterfly landed quite close to me -
Beautiful wings, deep red colours
and white sort of circles on them -
And these creatures don't last very long,
but it landed very close to me.
It didn't seem frightened.
And it just seemed to delight in opening and closing its wings
and just actually being beautiful for that period of time,
enjoying the sunshine,
and perhaps there isn't actually any more to life than that,
than just being what you are,
realizing that there - that life goes on all around,
and there are millions of other living creatures
who all have to find their paths as well.
Whee!
(narrator) At the end of their very special day in London,
after their trip to the zoo and the party,
we took our children to an adventure playground
where they could do just what they liked.
Those from the children's home set about building a house.
There's Nicholas.
And Tony.
Andrew.
John.
And Bruce.
Suzie.
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.