- I wanna be a jockey when I grow up.
Yeah, I wanna be a jockey when I grow up.
- I'm down for Heathfield and Southall Manor.
- Well, going to Africa, and try and teach people.
- I don't think you want to go to university
if you want to be an astronaut.
- I'd like to find out all about the moon, and all that.
- Is it important to fight, yes.
♪ These are the actions they must do ♪
- I just wanna be a jockey when I grow up.
Yeah, I wanna be a jockey when I grow up.
- Tony was already an apprentice
at Tommy Gosling's Racing Stables in Epsom
when he left school at 14.
- 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 for third,
and I had a photo finish,
so I took it out of the box and kept it as a souvenir.
- 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.
I wouldn't bother.
- And what do you think you would do then?
- Learn taxis.
- Tony didn't make it as a jockey.
He had three races, wasn't placed, and gave it up.
At 21 he was doing the Knowledge,
learning to be a London cabbie.
- I will be a cab driver, and I know I will.
And I want to prove every person
who think I can't be a cab driver wrong,
and I'll get that badge,
and I'm gonna put it right in their face,
just to tell 'em how wrong they can be,
and how underestimated I am.
It's surprising who you pick up, you see.
I once met Kojak, I picked him up.
And Warren Mitchell, or Alf Garnett, you know?
And I said, "Oh, hello, Warren, how are you, mate?
"Good to see ya."
So he ends up saying, "I wanna go to Langan's Brasserie."
You know, Stratton Street, Langan's.
So half way there I said, "Listen," I said,
"Warren, it wouldn't,"
I said, "It wouldn't be you
"if you don't sort of come out with Alf, you know?
"I mean, give us a, let us see how he's going, you know?"
So straight away he's brought Alf Garnett to life
in the back of me cab.
So, we're on the way to Langan's, you know.
All I can hear is Alf Garnett, you know.
"It's the Labour government," and, "Your lot up here."
When we get there, I said, like,
"Thanks, Warren, terrific, mate, 1.80."
So, he gave me exactly 1.80.
"Listen," I said, "I know you're Alf Garnett.
"I know you're having trouble."
So I, like, I said,
"But I want you to become Warren Mitchell now."
"Like, my tip's all like 20-odd pence," or whatever.
He said, "Son," as in Alf Garnett still,
"you know Alf's doing bad at the moment, I can't afford it,"
and he walked away, and like, he done me like a kipper.
- What does it take to be a good cabbie?
- I think, meself, happy-go-lucky character,
and to take as much as what any other person
couldn't take in a normal job,
because it's a big world out there,
and everyone's a different character,
all that I pick up.
Their attitudes, some of 'em, like the city gents,
the typical, "Waterloo, driver, please, in five minutes,"
I'll sort of say, "Hold on, mate,
"I'll get me helicopter out of the boot."
I love being a taxi driver,
I like the outdoor life, the independence.
There's no one to govern me, or say, like,
"You've gotta be in at a certain time."
- Sometimes on a Saturday morning I go to the pictures.
Sometimes with my friends, sometimes with him.
- You don't!
- I do!
- She don't
I don't ever see ya!
You go to a different pictures.
- Have you got a girlfriend?
- No.
- Would you like to have a girlfriend?
- No.
Do you understand the four Fs?
Find 'em, feed 'em, and forget 'em, but for the other F,
I'll let you use your own discrimination.
I mean, this one, I tried to do the three Fs,
but I couldn't forget her.
- I used to work in a pub,
just on Friday nights, barmaids, barmaiding.
And then from there one night I went to a discotheque.
He was in the pub earlier on,
and then afterwards we went to a discotheque,
and Tony was standing there.
And I just, from there I just, that was it.
I couldn't get rid of him.
- Bee around honey, you know?
- And why did you fall in love with him?
- I don't know.
- I don't know, either.
I don't know how you put up with me for so long.
- I don't know, right?
Sometimes I don't know how I stand him.
- But what is it that you
love about him? - I like his personality.
It doesn't matter who it is, he don't change for nobody.
- There's only one ambition, really, I want a baby son.
If I see my baby son, that is my ambition fulfilled.
No one knows it, only you now.
- We've got two children.
Nicky's 6 1/2, Jodi's 2 1/2, nearly three,
and I'm having another one in March.
- Who looks after them, or do you share it up?
- Me, basically, yeah.
He does take 'em out quite a lot, but,
telling offs and smacks is all left to me.
I have to do all of that.
He don't like smacking 'em.
He don't like telling them off,
unless it's really, really...
- Anything serious, then I... - Serious, then he would.
- They all got, see that baby one?
- So what advantages do you think you've had
over some of the other people that we've filmed?
- Well, academically,
probably they've had more advantages over me.
I don't know, the fact they've had prep schools
at a very early age, you know, they've benefited by it,
which, you know, it tells obviously in this film.
But as far as, you know,
the stability and the backgrounds with their parents,
they've missed out on that.
- Tone, I don't like 'em near me.
- Come on. - Have a piece of bread each.
Here, Jodi.
Jodi, come on.
- Being in the prep school,
they're missing the love and the care
what every East Ender always gets, you know,
gives their children each time they come home from work.
And the parents, you know,
sometimes obviously are not gonna be there,
'cause they're away at prep school.
They're missing the love and affection,
you know, what they are craving for.
When my kids are growing up,
I wanna see the change in 'em all the time,
so I have my own memories of when they was a kid,
and how they were, you know, and what they were like.
- Would everybody please sit round now,
get on with their work.
I don't want to see any backs to me.
There shouldn't be anyone turning round.
Tony, do you hear as well?
Get on with your work in front.
Tony!
Don't turn around again.
- Education is, it's just a thing to say,
"My son is higher than him," or,
"My son had a better background than him."
I mean, I'm as good or even better than most of them people.
Especially on this programme.
I mean, I'm one of the tail-enders.
You'll think, oh, the East End boy, you know,
and he ain't got a no-good education.
But all of a sudden the East End boy's got a car, motorbike,
and he goes to Spain every year, and whatever.
And have I worked for it?
No, I'm here putting bets on.
And you think, "How does he do it?"
And there's a boy, who was at Eaton, and all, whatever.
He's studying to be a professor, he's making up the things.
And where's the education?
There's no education in this world.
It's just one big rat race,
and you've gotta kill your man next to you
to get in front of him.
Education, when I said, "There's no education,"
yes, there is an education.
I made a grave mistake in saying that.
But I didn't mean to say
there's no education as far as academically.
Yes, there is.
The area, the environment, and education,
makes a person have more opportunities in this world.
You know what I mean, that's obvious.
- Let's talk about the kids.
Do you want for them what you had for yourself,
in terms of schooling and everything?
- You're talking about my childhood?
Five years old, upwards to seven, eight, nine,
I had no money, my father had no money,
and I had my brother's clothes for 10 years.
His hand-me-downs are sorta going on my arms
with holes in, you see?
I've never had any opportunities to better myself,
'cause I was a kid.
I never knew no better.
And my mum and dad, you know,
my dad's got ill health, you know, he couldn't work.
I'm not making a violin story out of this.
I mean, that's the way it was.
And I'm more stronger it happened that way.
I mean, I'm a more stronger person.
I appreciate things more now.
And now I'm in a position, through my job, you know,
to give my kids the life I never had, like lovely clothes.
I go to holidays, you know,
I go to Portugal, and I go to Spain,
hopefully America next year.
I mean, I want everything I never had,
to go, you know, on my kids,
to say that, you know,
let them know the benefits of the nice life,
what it's all about.
The poshens, "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes."
They're nuts!
You just have to touch 'em.
Yeah, they, well, they can get what they want, can't they?
If you have gotta work for it,
and it's them, they can just ask for money and get it,
and they can buy what they want.
I've learnt through driving a cab
that people are individuals, whatever they are,
upper class or, you know, middle class, or,
as in my case, you know, East Ender.
But I'm only glad, you know,
that I've found out the difference at an early age,
so I can judge people
on what they are rather than who they are.
I'm not a politician,
so let them worry about what's coming for the next day.
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 wanna understand.
- Four to one, Cooladine.
- 4 1/250s, 4 1/250s, four to one.
- At 21 he was earning a bit extra
as a bookie's runner at Hackney Wick.
- What do they call you here?
- I reckon a pest, or something like that.
I don't mean to make a nuisance of myself.
I mean, it's for the other patrons in the place.
I mean, they don't want to see
a little boy nipping between their feet, running,
putting a bet on here for a face, you understand?
They think, "Oh, what's he doing, is he mad?"
I mean, I walk up there and I order the teas.
There could be eight people in front of me, I just go,
"Can I have a tea please, tea please,"
five times, "tea please, tea please."
And they've gotta serve me before them,
or get rid of me, do you understand?
So that's how you've gotta do it.
I'm in two golf societies, and each month,
all the members of each society meet to play a game of golf.
- Oh! - Too close.
- And who are the guys you play with?
- Well, they're mostly publicans,
or taxi drivers, you know?
And, we always end up, you know, having a small bet.
- Do you like the whole social side of it?
- Only with my mates, because on a golf course,
it becomes very snooty type, you know?
I mean, I understand they've gotta pay
400 pound a year membership.
And they don't, you know,
really want people without any etiquette
to go on a golf course
and ruin their so-called golf course, right?
- It's good.
Great shot, great shot.
- Fore! - Fore!
- It does get a bit, a pain sometimes, you know,
when they keep saying, "Excuse me sir, are you a member?"
It comes out like that.
But obviously etiquette's etiquette,
so you've gotta conduct yourself on these type of courses.
- Because, I think, you're a bit smaller than most people,
you try to hit the ball hard.
You've gotta just, it'll get there.
- Where'd you go, Ken?
- I'm over here.
- Oh, I missed that one. - Unlucky, keep hold of her.
- It's about an eight to the right.
- Too much mate, too much.
- No it ain't, no it ain't, no.
Tone, hit an eight, here.
It's definitely an eight. - No that's too much.
Too much club, Ken.
- Eight, hit an eight. - No, no,
get us a nine, mate.
- What are you gonna hit, then?
- Nine-iron, I think that's about right.
- Yeah, go on, then.
If you hit a nine, hit it to the right.
That's it, that's it, that's perfect.
Great shot!
That's a great shot.
- Now I am a young fella, and I come to you, and I just,
I heard that you're a big, successful taxi driver...
- You want advice. - And I say to you, yes.
- I've been a film extra now for six years.
It may not go no further.
I mean, I'm just having acting lessons.
- You give me the benefit of all of your experience.
All right, now, you've gotta feel pretty big,
bigger than me.
- Just go?
- Right then, here we go.
- Tell me, son, what do you wanna be a cab driver for, mate?
- Well, make a lot of money, you know, have a good life.
- Son, look at me, I may be a successful businessman.
I might have the suit, I might have the,
all the holidays in Spain every year,
but son, it's hard work out there, mate.
- Come on, you're not reaching me yet.
- Not getting to you? - You're not getting to me.
All right, now be bigger, dominate me, all right?
- Son. - Yeah?
- Son, it's a big world out there, and obviously I'm not...
I can't get into it, Warren.
- All right, don't worry, don't worry.
- When I was in "The Sweeney,"
and when I was in "Churchill: The Wilderness Years,"
I'd see the actors, and yeah, I thought, like, you know,
it's not quite easy to act on stage.
Of course, it's, you know, you need time and dedication.
It's very hard.
Son, tell me, why do you wanna be a taxi driver?
- Well, you know, you've got success.
- Don't let looks go impressing,
you know what I mean, listen.
- What excites you about acting?
- I like it, I mean, I think of meself,
you know, like, I can do that,
and I still wanna have a go of it.
I mean, nothing for sort of fame and fortune,
or anything like that,
you know, big Hollywood and bright lights.
It's nothing like that, just a sideline.
- So what drives you then
through all these various ambitions?
- It's the philosophy of not keeping still.
I mean, I'm a very overactive type of person.
I mean, I like to feel that I don't wanna keep still,
'cause life, you know, don't wait for nobody,
so you've gotta cram it in as much as you can
before your days are numbered.
I mean, I'm made to be
a happy-go-lucky type of fellow, which I am.
I'm an East Ender, which, the attitude is,
"Hello, mate, all right, how are ya," type of thing,
and I wouldn't wanna lose that.
- How long are you gonna be a cab driver?
Is this what you wanna do for the rest of your life?
- Well, at the moment, I'm very happy in driving a cab.
But my wife and I always considered owning our own pub,
so obviously, I think, within two or three years,
once I get financially straightened out,
I'm gonna have a go at being a publican.
And if I don't like it,
say, if I give it a go for a year, or even six months,
if I don't like being a publican,
I'm in a good position to say, well,
I'll get rid of the pub and go back to taxi driving.
I don't wanna change, because if I change,
it proves the other Tony Walker was all fake.
54 to 20, Boris.
- What are the best times for you?
- Well, two, really.
The best time was when the kids, first baby was born.
The next one, obviously, Jodi.
But my greatest fulfilment in life,
when I rode at Kempton in the same race as Lester Piggott.
I was a naive, wet-behind-the-ears apprentice,
and the governor told me, "You've gotta ride, son.
"Friday, you've gotta lose X amount of weight,"
which I did, eight pound in four days.
And he says, like, I go in there,
and they're all there, you know.
I'm part of it.
All my years, from seven, all my ambition,
is fulfilled in one moment,
when the long fellow come out,
and I'm in with him, like in the same...
The starter's calling the register of the names,
and he'll sorta go like "Piggott, draw, eight.
"Walker, draw, 10."
And your idol, like,
you're there, and the big man's there, you know what I mean?
Money in the whole world couldn't buy that.
Proudest day of my life, which,
my ambition fulfilled to the highest level.
And I eventually finished last.
Tailed off obviously,
but it didn't make any difference to me.
Just to be part of it, be with the man himself.
You couldn't buy it.
That was the proudest day of my whole life.
- Well, going to Africa,
and try and teach people who are not civilised
to be more or less good.
No, I don't want to be a missionary,
because I just can't talk about it to people.
You know, I'm interested in it myself,
but I wouldn't be very good at it, at all.
- Chris Awalambe. - Yes, sir!
- Mohan Ali. - Yes, sir!
- Kasim Mahir. - Yes, sir!
- Oscar Ali. - Yes, sir!
- Nasril. - Yes, sir.
- Sultan. - Yes, sir.
- Abdul Khair.
I was working at an insurance company at the time,
and I decided to go into teaching,
without any experience at all,
and I didn't think they would allow somebody
to walk off the street into a classroom.
Six times three is 18, shared by two is nine,
plus seven is 16, so you put the 16 there.
They were crying out for maths teachers.
They interviewed me.
They phoned me up the next day,
and said, would I like the job?
I said yes, within five weeks I was in a classroom.
They took one look at me,
and thought it was Christmas, I think.
Okay, so once you're done, all right?
- What's the most
enjoyable thing about teaching?
- Just being a part of the pupils' advancement and learning,
and watching them understand more, and being more confident,
then getting some enjoyment
and satisfaction from mathematics.
- After working in the City for three years,
Bruce started teaching at Tony's old school,
in the East End of London.
He lives in a local council flat,
within walking distance of the school.
- Balden, let's have the present tense of vasto.
Yes, speak up.
- 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.
- When we filmed him at 21,
Bruce was in his last year at Oxford, reading maths.
- And by Eisenstein.
You can show that this is irreducible.
Then you do a transformation on this polynomial,
x equals t plus two.
- Good, that's a nice way of doing it,
particularly using Eisenstein down here,
because his test is very powerful.
- Yes.
- 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
- And to here, 25, right, so if you get across to 25.
- It's so different from your own education
where you're teaching now, why?
- General education is better for society, I think.
Public schools are divisive.
That's with no statement about my education.
My education was academically excellent,
and I was very grateful for it.
I think there is a class society,
and I think public schools may help its continuance.
So you're in the lead, you see,
because DSE CABS has got a profit of two pounds,
and GOODB CABS has got no profit at all, okay?
Now, can you explain that just to Abdul,
'cause I want him to understand what it is.
I don't know whether I said, "Right, I must do something
"which is against what I have been brought up to do,"
or whatever.
I don't know, I've just found something I find rewarding.
I didn't agree with the Conservatives
about what they were doing with the black people,
you know, the racial policy.
- Do you have to defend immigration
to a lot of people in this area?
- Yes, I think you do,
but those who say there are too many coming in, and so on,
I think, really, are uneducated about the whole question.
They should see the positive benefits
that they're having in this country,
and see that as a result of all of this immigration,
they're not being denied opportunities.
It's not the fault of immigrants that there is unemployment.
It's part of a political party's responsibility,
is to explain that,
and show people what is the more truthful way
of representing the situation.
None of the parties really seem to agree with me,
but I think if I had voted, I'd have voted Labour.
I am about the only socialist in my village.
And I go into the pub,
and I sort of expect to stand up
and defend all socialist policies.
Sort of, this is the village socialist,
no, village idiot, sorry.
I just see there are a lack of opportunities
for a lot of people.
Obviously unemployment is a great
feature in many people's lives, and many family's lives.
And teaching children, sometimes you wonder,
what's going to happen to them.
It seems to me that the leader of the country at the moment
should be one of the most unpopular persons in the country,
and yet she gets away with everything.
She, as far as I can see, has done lots of damage,
and yet, nobody can oppose her.
My heart's desire is to see my daddy,
who is 6,000 miles away.
And I can remember being happy there.
I can remember also being miserable,
because I can remember crying.
- Squad, steady!
- And I always seemed to be beaten on.
I never used to understand why.
- Did it give you
an overdeveloped sense of authority?
- If you look at society in general,
I've always probably been on the side of authority.
And you know, it's been,
an education, learning that authority can be bad,
and can be corrupt.
- Squad, left foot inward, please!
Squad, breathe in!
- 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 think I would very much like to
become involved in a family, my own family, for a start.
That's a need that I feel I ought to fulfil,
and would like to fulfil, and would do it well.
I mean, I do think a lot of people think too much about it.
- What happened when you burnt your fingers?
- I'd rather not talk about it, really.
Well, no, I didn't really mean that.
I mean, I don't mean that I don't want to talk about it.
Just, I'd need quite a long time to think about it, really.
I think I possibly get a little serious.
I don't quite understand the modern,
sort of, way of behaving, the modern manner.
I think I'm a little old fashioned.
Now, at three o'clock
I'm going to come and pick you up from art.
You'll only have one art lesson.
So if your art teacher forgets, at five to three,
ask her to say, "We should be packing away now,"
and I'll come and get you.
- So there you were,
you went to a posh preparatory school,
and a major public school, and then to Oxford,
and now you're in a council flat,
teaching in this school in the East End of London.
You don't feel any sense of disappointment?
- No, because what I am trying to do at the moment
and achieve is difficult.
It may not sound difficult in the sense that
you could sum up what I do quite simply,
but behind all that, it is very difficult.
I certainly find it satisfying achieving successes.
There may come a time when I decide I can't do it,
and that's not necessarily a weakness.
That may be a strength, that you realise,
you can't do it as well as you would wish.
I think the most important thing in the world
is everyone should know about God.
It all springs from,
loving God and Christ, I suppose,
that you try and do that as best as possible,
and let that lead your actions in life.
- Does it sadden you when you meet people
who don't believe in Christianity?
- Yes, if they dismiss it casually.
If they dismiss it as just being something...
"Oh, well, we know about that.
"We got a bit of that at school,"
and it doesn't really mean very much,
then it does sadden me, because, you know,
it's much, much more than that.
- What is it about it that's important to you?
- Well, the belief in...
The belief that in goodness and in love, as being two,
well, great positive forces, and that, you know, people...
Well, just the simple belief, like,
a good act is never wasted.
Certainly, you can observe somebody when they're seven,
and identify particular things,
which maybe are then always with them,
whatever else happens to them.
People possibly say I'm little innocent at times, or naive.
I used to get worried about this, and think,
perhaps I ought not to be taken in, or deceived, or...
I'm not talking about love now,
I'm just talking about generally speaking.
I feel that's a strength in a way.
I think, you know,
if there are people who are willing to trust,
then, you know, we should be encouraged.
- Tell me, do you have any boyfriends, Suzi?
- Yes.
- Tell me about him.
- Well, he lives up in Scotland, and I think he's 13.
I'm rather lonely up there,
because he usually goes to school.
But we usually play till about half past six,
when he comes home from school.
Then we go in, and then he goes home to do his homework.
- Have you got any boyfriends, Suzi?
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'm very, very cynical about it.
But then, you know,
you get a certain amount of faith restored in it.
Well, 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.
We were friends for about two years.
- Rupert and Suzi were married five years ago.
- And, I think the nice thing was
that we knew each other very well before.
We knew quite a lot of the faults of each other,
which I think is very important.
I don't sort of sit down and think,
or, you know, analyse marriage.
It's not something I've had to come up and think about,
or that I was going to get married,
and I've got no desire to at the moment.
I think 20 is far too young.
I suppose 22 is considered quite young.
I felt it was the right time.
I don't see what I would've gained
by waiting another three years.
- What gave you that feeling?
- I just felt I was doing the right thing,
which, as you said, was extraordinary,
when only about 18 months before I was very anti it.
I came to London when I left school after Paris,
and at the moment I could never live in the country.
I'm happy down here.
I mean, the country is nice for four days,
to go for healthy long walks, but I mean,
I could never live up there now.
- They live in a small village near Bath,
where Rupert is a partner in a firm of solicitors.
- I had seven years up in London, I suppose.
It was fantastic, but I've just had enough.
It's a much slower way of life down here,
and I'd had enough of the rat race.
When I get married, I'd like to have two children.
I'm not very children-minded at the moment.
I don't know if I ever will be.
- What do you think about them?
- Well, I don't like babies.
- What was the biggest shocks to you
when you suddenly were confronted with a small baby
that you had to be responsible for?
- Panic set in, I think,
that I wasn't going to be able to cope.
- Would you like to have
a nanny to look after them,
or do you want to look after them?
- No, I want a nanny to look after them.
I felt that we'd taken the decision
to bring a child into the world,
and I feel that I wanted to bring him up, not somebody else.
I feel that it's my responsibility to start him off.
Whether that'll make any difference to how he turns out,
I don't know.
I just felt I wanted to do it.
- Is it everything you wanted?
- For the moment, yes.
I mean, I don't think I'll have any more,
for the reason that I will get pleasure out of these two,
but I can't see me going on and on and on,
with sort of four or five children.
I think I feel that I'd want to move on
and try and do something else.
When I leave this school,
I'm down for Heathfield and Southall Manor.
And then maybe I may want to go to a university,
but I don't know which one yet.
I'd like to do,
maybe shorthand typing, or something like that.
I left school when I was 16, and went to Paris.
I went to secretarial college, and got a job.
- What made you decide
to leave school and go to Paris?
- Well, I just wasn't interested in school,
and just wanted to get away.
- And why did you choose Paris?
- I don't know, it was my parents, really.
Now I've got to a stage in my life
where I've got to make my own decisions.
You've got to learn to fend for yourself one day.
I went to prep school boarding when I was nine.
Rupert went at eight, and both of us hated it.
I hated my prep school.
I just feel it's too young to send a child off,
and we both feel we'd never send Thomas and Oliver off,
probably maybe till they're 13.
I think eight's much too young,
so we will definitely keep them at home.
- Do you still want to send them
in the private sector to school?
- I think we will, yes, but as I said, not till they're 13.
- Why do you choose the private sector,
as opposed to the state?
- I suppose it's what we had, it's what we know.
I think both of us probably were very sheltered.
It's only having been abroad that you can appreciate more
that people are very different, cultures are different.
But I think, as I was growing up,
I think probably I was far too sheltered.
- What do you think about making this programme?
- I just think it's just ridiculous.
I don't see any point in doing it.
I've been very lucky up to a certain point,
but everyone has their bad times.
And I'm only just beginning, I mean, I'm only young,
and I'll probably have a lot worse
than I've been through now.
When you're a child, you always think how nice it would be
to be grown up and independent, and these.
But there are times when I wish I was sort of three again.
- It just seems a miracle to me.
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 him some credit.
- I'm now chain smoking ever since.
- No, I didn't know where I was going at 21.
I mean, I suppose I thought I was reasonably happy at 21,
but I had no kind of direction, no...
I obviously hadn't found what I had wanted,
and I don't think most people have at 21.
You're still very, very young.
- As a teenager, Suzi spent her school holidays
on her father's estate in Scotland.
- What sort of things do you do?
- Ride, swim, play tennis, ping-pong.
I might play croquet, things like that.
- What about the social life, what's that?
- What, in Perthshire?
- Yeah. - Hmm, it's quite fun.
Well, obviously any child going through
their parents splitting up, age 14,
you're at a very vulnerable age,
and it does, I mean, it does cut you up, but,
you know, you get over it.
It's not, I mean, there's no point,
there was no point in them staying together for me,
'cause it was worse, I mean the rows, and...
It's worse, so if two people can't live together,
there's no point making yourself.
My father died three years ago.
It's very hard to describe to somebody
how you just take the loss.
It is terribly hard, and even now,
I still can't believe my father's not here.
It's still sinking in, I think,
even after two and a half years.
He was off in Scotland.
It was in that very bad winter of '81,
and we were literally snowed in, and I couldn't get out,
and it was three weeks before Thomas was born.
I wasn't allowed to fly, no airline would take me,
and the trains were blocked with the snow,
and so I couldn't get there.
And I feel...
I still feel guilty
that I didn't try and get myself out of here to go, but,
you know, when you're told you could endanger a baby's life,
you have to rather sit, sit still.
The death of one of your close family
is probably something you don't ever get over,
and it's a different kind of problem than anything else.
And it is hard to come to terms with.
And it was really last year that it sunk in
that he really wasn't around anymore.
- What do you want most out of life?
- To be happy, and get on with life.
I mean, I don't want to just sit back,
and let it all whiz past.
I mean, you don't know how long you've got your life for.
I mean, you know, you could get run over by a bus tomorrow,
so you've gotta make the most of it while you've got it.
- Do you have any fears
for the future, for yourself?
- No, not so much for myself at all.
I feel if I was going to have fallen by the wayside,
I'd have done it by now.
I think probably I'm too staid now to do that.
But maybe I'm wrong.
- When I grow up,
I'd like to find out all about the moon, and all that.
- At seven, Nick, a farmer's son,
was at a one-room village school in the Dales.
- And I said I was interested in physics and chemistry.
Well, I'm not gonna do that here.
- At 14 he was going
to a Yorkshire boarding school,
and at 21 was reading physics at Oxford.
- Plug it in. - We'll give it a whirl.
- So what career are you gonna pursue?
- It depends on whether I'll be good enough
to do what I want to really do.
I would like, if I can, to do research.
- He is now in America,
an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin,
earning $30,000 a year.
- The gas in these experiments is at a temperature
comparable with that of the sun,
whereas in a power reactor it would be maybe
10 times the temperature of the sun,
and we're trying to induce that gas to fuse.
The fusion reaction gives off energy and produces the power
that would be turned into electrical energy,
and sent out to the consumer.
- How hot is it in there?
- In there, it's at about 10 million degrees.
- Nick is a nuclear physicist.
He's using these high temperatures to fuse atoms,
to try to produce energy which is free from radioactivity.
- Have to be precisely coordinated with the positive decay.
- I finished my degree in physics,
and I went on to do a PhD
And having got the PhD,
after, so it took 2 1/2 years to get that,
which was relatively quick,
I went to work at the United Kingdom
Atomic Energy Authority's Culham laboratory,
which is where they do fusion research,
and that is what I've been aiming to do throughout my PhD.
But I found when I got there that,
I got a big shock when I found that my standard of living
went down when I started work.
So, when some people here had offered me a job,
I thought this might be a good opportunity
to go somewhere else where the research environment
was a bit more vigorous.
So I came here in November of 1982, into a blizzard.
The university is substantially different
from an English university for several reasons.
It's a much bigger university.
Oxford had 10,000, people, this has 40,000 people.
I guess the mixture of people who come here are different.
A far bigger fraction of the population
go to university here.
Oxford is full of people who really are trying
to prove something, I suppose, or be something,
a lot of people with social or intellectual pretensions.
You're less aware of that sort of thing here.
On the other hand, the American system
is much more like the comprehensive system in England
would set out to try and be.
It takes many more people,
and gets a huge section of the population
to a level where they're really technically very competent,
and can go out and make Silicon Valley work.
- Do you have a girlfriend?
- I don't want to answer that.
I don't want to answer those kind of questions.
I thought that one will come up, because when I was...
When I was doing the other one, somebody said,
"What do you think about girls?",
and I said, "I don't answer questions like that."
Is that the reason you're asking it?
Yeah, I thought so.
The best answer would be to say
that I don't answer questions like that,
but I mean, you know, it was what I said when I was seven,
and it's still the most sensible,
but I mean, what about them?
- Nick was only 17 when I first met him,
and I knew he was a nice person.
I find him very attractive, and...
He uses his intelligence in his relationship with me,
which is very important.
A lot of people can be very bright.
- Nick and Jackie met
when they were students at Oxford.
Jackie is doing a post-graduate course in business studies.
- And what about you, Nick?
Why did you marry Jackie?
- Because she's, I find her attractive,
she's bright and independent, and...
- I mean, if you'd been somebody who,
that 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?
- I think we would've had problems.
Or if one of us had not wanted children.
- When I grow up,
I'd like to find out all about the moon, and all that.
- Where did you get all this brain power?
- All this brain power?
I don't know, did it just happen?
All this brain power, that's a hard one to answer,
because first I have to accept
that I've got all this brain power,
and that's not the sort of thing I tend to go around saying.
But I've always been interested in,
from a very early age, in technical or scientific things.
When I was very young,
I had a big picture book about the planets,
and I thought this was wonderful.
And I've just been interested in that sort of thing,
and reading technical or scientific material
for a long, long time.
I was the only child my of age in my village,
but I managed to spend my time
talking to adults who were around.
If one is wandering down a country lane,
there is an awful lot to look at in the world around you.
I remember looking at various natural phenomena,
and being intrigued to try and understand
what made them tick.
One time I was particularly wrapped up
in how a particular cloud, which was a very unusual shape,
and how did that work, and that was the sort of thing
that made me want to go further into natural sciences.
I think that if I'd been in a city,
I probably would've had more interaction with people,
and might've developed more
skills in dealing with other kids.
Trying to become a reasonably well-adjusted person
was for me a bit of a struggle for a while.
I was given a fantastic opportunity
when I went to university,
and that really saved my bacon.
They'd like to come out for a holiday in the country,
when we'd like, when I'd like to have a holiday in the town.
I've been to Leeds a couple of times.
I haven't been to Manchester.
I went to London with the others,
when you did the first programme,
but that's the only time I've been.
- What attracts you about America?
- It's an exciting place to be, there's a lot going on,
in terms of research, and other things.
But I really came here to do research,
but there are more opportunities,
and just a general feeling of more going on
than I had previously.
The place is less hidebound,
it's less bureaucratically tied down,
so it's much easier to go out
and get things done than in England.
- Do you get lonely here?
- You just tend to get stuck here into your everyday routine
and you don't think about it.
But when you call home,
then you realise how far away you are.
And now it seems acute,
because both our families are getting older.
Even if you think in terms of seeing them
once every two years.
- That's not so many times. - You're thinking only
about 10 times, and that's awful,
when you think in those terms,
and realise, you know, you really are in exile.
- Does this put a pressure
on your relationship?
- No, I think it binds us together,
because we just have one another over here.
- In 21, some of the people were saying
that they felt it was immoral to emigrate, immoral to leave.
Do you have any feelings about that,
since you are the one who's left?
- In my position,
I don't feel that I'm letting England down,
because I don't think that England
particularly wanted me there, doing what I was doing.
It had trained me marvellously.
I'd gone through a wonderful educational system.
Particularly Oxford was a fantastic experience socially.
Again, it was a great place to try and develop emotionally,
and the academic standards there are absolutely superb.
Having trained in a very academic fashion there,
and I then went out to try
and do something with all that training,
and found that society just wasn't terribly interested
in what I was trying to do,
so how can I feel that I'm betraying a country
when it doesn't want me to do what it's trained me to do?
The big issue for us at the moment is
how we're going to manage to have kids and run two careers.
We don't want to miss out on the chance
of having a significant career,
and we don't want to miss out on the chance to have kids,
and to be involved with them.
- But in those early formative years,
would you be happy for your children
to be brought up by Jackie,
and Jackie not be able to give them her full attention?
- Well it's not, I mean, that's putting it
in a rather strange way. - He's bringing them up, too,
you know, it's not just me.
- This is an area,
I pay lip service to the idea
of equal shares on this as well,
and it remains to be seen
whether I would actually live up to my intention.
- There are several things, I think, to be said here.
If we both work in academia,
that will make life much easier,
because as things are at the moment in the States,
if you have a computer at home, you can come in to teach,
and to give office hours to your students,
but you can work half of the day from home.
But I don't want to be the person left behind,
while Nick flies in and shares an adult life,
with his children, at college, and working.
I want to be there, too.
- Is she difficult?
- At times, yes.
Whenever we have an argument,
she does have a tendency to explode, I suppose.
No, to get really miserable about it, and not...
- We've only been married four years.
Anything could happen, we could easily drift apart.
There are so many pressures on people.
You just have to work at it.
That's why it's important that you have the same ideas,
that you want the same kind of life.
- When we were in England,
our big source of arguments was money.
We were always squabbling about money.
But that one, mercifully,
seems to have gone away pretty well.
And we still disagree, but it isn't a major source of rows.
I mean, a person with one million pounds
is not gonna be much,
is not going to be more unhappy
than a person with two million pounds.
I've never really been aiming for money,
and that's curiously enough why it was such a surprise.
It really surprised me when I found
that my standard of living mattered to me.
When I finished university,
and I found that I couldn't afford
what I'd been able to afford as a student,
it suddenly caught up with me for the first time in my life
that I really did care about how much money I was getting,
and it didn't ever occur to me that I would.
If I can change the world, I'd change it into a diamond.
I'd like to think that I, I mean,
I'm hoping that I might do at some stage,
but I don't really think that I've done anything
you can call a great success.
It would seem really ridiculous
to any of my friends who watch this, if I said,
"Christ, aren't I a great success, look at me."
- When I first met you, I remember I thought,
this was very idealistic, but it was rather interesting.
While, I asked you why you're working on fusion,
you said that you wanted to save the world.
And I think that's a bit embarrassing now,
but I don't think you'd feel the same way
about something that you didn't feel mattered.
- That's right, I picked it because I thought
it really was something that could be useful to people,
hopefully, eventually.
Yes, it would be a disappointment
if I didn't achieve very much,
but I'm not worrying about it very much.
I've just got to go out and make it happen.
- I don't think you want to go to university
if you want to be an astronaut.
- Well, I've changed my mind completely, of course.
I think it was just the imagination a seven-year-old has.
I might be living in cloud cuckoo land, you know.
Sort of, Mum and Dad might say, "No son, that's not life.
"You don't get a job you like."
But I'd like to think I could.
Teachers are undervalued, underrated.
The system is beginning to crumble.
People outside of it don't realise that, but it is,
and it's very disillusioning.
You know, you don't feel you're getting anywhere.
And of course, the money as well,
which, whatever the papers tell you, is abysmal.
- Peter left his comprehensive school
in Liverpool,
and at 21 was studying history at London University,
living in student digs.
- The facts were
that I'm not particularly an intelligent person.
Just reasonably, I suppose, but I'm not a genius,
and I just went to college on three reasonable A levels,
and just didn't do very much work for three years,
just did the bare minimum.
Turned up to lectures, wrote a few essays,
and you get a degree for it, and it's a joke, really.
Once Carolyn Setford said she loved me.
And I'm going to marry her when I grow up.
Doesn't appeal to me at all at the moment.
But I mean, well, I've just gone 20.
I haven't even been abroad yet in my life,
so there's no way I'm gonna get settled down.
- What was it about Peter
that you fell in love with?
- Who said anything about love?
I don't know.
We have a very, much the same attitude,
much the same general attitude to life,
even though we're very different in personality,
and in the things we like to do.
- What is it about his personality
that attracted you?
- Well, nothing, really, I don't know.
Not a great deal.
- Peter and Rachel have been married four years,
and met at teacher-training college.
They have just bought their first home,
a terraced house in the centre of Leicester.
They both have careers.
Peter teaches in a comprehensive school,
Rachel in a college of further education.
- There are two risks,
either for one of us to follow the other around,
and therefore perhaps become frustrated and dissatisfied
that you didn't initially follow your own line,
or your own individual wants,
or there's the risk that you take
that you perhaps do have to part sometimes,
for jobs, or whatever,
or for what you particularly want to do.
I think the latter risk is much more worth taking.
- So you would be prepared to part?
- Yeah, I mean, obviously there is an element of compromise.
Otherwise, why get married?
- And do you have any plans for children?
- Not at the moment, no.
I don't suppose we've really thought about it seriously.
- Why is that?
- Well, I suppose 'cause we've both got, you know,
things we'd still prefer to be doing.
You know, if you have children, that immediately limits you.
I don't wanna be limited yet.
- If you choose to have a family,
then you also have a responsibility to children.
So you know, it's a very difficult decision.
And although I think most liberated men
would say that they, too, are involved in that decision,
I think ultimately the responsibility
still comes down on the woman's head.
- Is Peter liberated?
- Well, I think a lot of men such as Peter
like to think they're liberated,
and I'm not in any way
saying that he's not.
But I think when it comes to the crunch,
you know, the absolute crunch,
are you gonna give up your job to look after these children?
And then I think it, more often than not,
that decision is made by the woman rather than the man.
- If you do have children,
would you want them educated
in the way that you've been educated?
- I don't know if things have changed,
but basically you've still got this emphasis
on just getting through exams, you know,
which isn't really education.
'Cause most of the stuff you come out of school with
is absolutely useless.
You just don't need it.
- So how would you bring them up,
educate them?
- Well I don't know, I suppose the easy answer is,
teach them more relevant things, you know,
get them to think for themselves a bit more,
which schools don't do enough.
- I mean, would you contemplate
putting them into the private sector of education?
- No, no, definitely not.
- Why?
- Well, it's just the principle, that's all there is to it.
- I mean, what is the principle?
- Well, the principle is that the private schools
help to keep the old class system going.
They're part of it, they perpetuate it,
so I'm certainly not gonna be involved in that.
- When I came through school at the end, perhaps, of the...
Well, let's say that the ideals of the 60s were still there,
even though it was the 70s,
and that one was always led to believe
that there were golden opportunities.
But of course there aren't, and very much now,
people of my generation are beginning to realise
what perhaps 16-year-olds know now at 16.
I am only just beginning to see that now at 27,
that in fact, you know, there aren't,
there's no such thing as, sort of,
mobility, in any sense of the word.
You know, it's very difficult to move up.
- Do you think you've had
as fair an opportunity
as other people? - Oh god, no.
Of course not.
- In what way?
- A lot of people have got it made for 'em still,
haven't they?
They've got it all lined up.
- How?
- Well, um...
Like the public school lads.
I don't want to slag off people in the programme with me,
not slag them off personally.
But I mean, they had it set up for them, didn't they?
It's a big problem.
It requires a lot of discussion, I think.
The workers do tend to take a few liberties
as regards strikes.
I would like to think that democracy's here to stay.
Perhaps we haven't got a full democracy.
In fact, we probably haven't, but it's a pretty good system.
- Are you surprised by the way
England's being governed?
- I'm not surprised with the people
who govern us at the moment, no.
- Why? - I've even stopped
being amazed.
- Why?
Well, I don't wanna get dragged into party politics,
but basically this is the most incompetent,
uncaring, bloody show we've ever had.
Well, if I can't be an astronaut,
I'd like to be a bridewell sergeant in the police force,
like my dad is.
- Do you want to be rich?
I wouldn't mind, no.
I think once I can get myself going, I can work solid, yeah.
But it's the motive which is very hard to acquire.
Yeah.
I'm dead lazy.
- Well, what are you gonna do about it?
- Not much.
I'm just hard to get.
You know, I'm not the sort of person
who can get charged up very quickly.
I am really lazy, you know.
If I've got things to do,
I'd sooner make a cup of tea first, and read the paper.
- He always looks on the negative side of life
before he looks on the positive,
whereas perhaps I'm the opposite,
and that in a sense is an area of conflict, yes.
Yeah, a clash of personalities, yeah.
- And how do you deal with that?
- Well, as you deal with all people like that.
You just give them a good kick, and say, you know,
"Wake up," so, you know, that kind of thing.
- And do you see any areas of conflict
in the future for you, in personality?
- No, no, I don't, not really, because I think we both,
we both appreciate each other's personalities.
In fact, it would be quite dull to be exactly the same.
I mean, there's something quite exciting in being different,
in that it isn't as predictable.
We're not along the same track all the time.
- On the grass we play international wrestling.
- Yeah, that's only at summertime, though.
- What have been for you the best times?
- Tommy Smith scoring the second goal in Rome, definitely.
One of the all-times.
- Which game was that?
That was the European Cup Final, 1977.
You know, after that it was all,
nothing else compares with it, really,
so it's hard to think of anything else.
Oh, I'll tell you what was another good moment.
A group I played with were doing quite well,
a few occasions, that was good.
- Tell me about that.
- It's just a local band I was in till fairly recently.
You know, we just played pubs and that,
but it was very enjoyable.
You know, when you get a good reaction from people,
it's just one of the best things you can have, really.
- Do you ever get that in your work?
- No, god, no.
- Why?
- Well, what are you asking?
If they applaud at the end of each lesson, or something?
- No, just that excitement.
It's that communication.
- No, no, I don't.
- Do you think people change much,
or do you think we saw you, the man,
in a seven-year-old boy?
- I thought for a while that was a bit too simple,
but I think it's true,
because after that, you know, your barriers begin to go up,
and you learn how to fend off things,
like I was just saying.
And obviously when you're seven you don't think about it.
You just come out with it.
So yeah, to a point you reflect that, yeah.
- So the boy at seven
is in a sense the real you?
- Yeah, I suppose, yeah, the sort of,
the essential Peter Davies.
- Whoopee!
- There were nine other children filmed in 1963.
What of them?
- 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.
- And I wasn't talking today,
and Mr. Brown sent me out for nothing.
- I feel like bundling when there's already a fight.
- If I can't be an astronaut,
I think I'll be a coach driver.
- I read the Financial Times.
- What's happened to these children?
Where are they, and what are they doing?
We'll see tomorrow night.