- In 1964 Granada Television brought together
a group of seven-year-olds
from all over the country and from all walks of life.
- I'm going to work in Woolworths.
- I read "The Financial Times."
- They talked about their dreams,
their ambitions, and their fears for the future.
- Everything throughout the year, it all landed on my head.
- For nearly half a century,
in a unique, groundbreaking series of films,
we have followed their lives every seven years.
They are now 46.
- Sometimes we go out and play nicely with the boys
and sometimes we go out and argue with the boys.
- Sue grew up in the East end of London.
- I don't think I'll
get married too early,
I'd like to have a full life first.
Marriage to me is a different thing to me,
and I've still got my ideals about marriage.
I don't know what it's all about.
- Sue was 24 when she married Billy,
and they had two children, William and Catherine.
- I think that to get married young
there must be things that you miss,
you must miss that crucial stage of being yourself,
because the minute you get married
you're no longer a single being,
you're a partnership and that should be the idea behind it.
- By the time Sue was 35, she was divorced.
- I've never sat down and thought, well what it was?
Was it this, was it that, I just knew it wasn't working.
I mean there have been relationships
when I could have settled but they didn't feel quite right,
so I've always come away and pulled away
and just waited until the right one come along,
if they ever do.
- At 42, when we filmed Sue in the karaoke bar
she brought Glen along to watch her sing.
♪ Baby, baby, baby, oh baby ♪
We'd just met and things are going well,
but now obviously things are going very well.
Well we've been engaged now for about 14 years.
I've not beaten any records,
but it's quite a long time isn't it, yeah.
Come on then.
- Jessie come on.
- We're completely different people,
he's very energetic and tidy minded
and I'm lazy and completely
inactive. - You're lazy?
- I am completely and absolutely lazy.
- Anything you want me to do?
- And what about the romance of getting married?
- Yeah, I mean I do admit it would be a nice party
and I quite relish the idea of having everyone round
and having a good old drink and a celebration,
but I can have a party anytime.
Who are you on the phone to?
- Never you mind.
- When I got married the primary reason
was because I wanted to have a child.
The two to me went together.
- Have you and Glenn thought
of having your own child?
- Glenn would have made a great dad
and when we first got together he asked me
if we could have a family and all that,
but I felt like I was past it really, to be honest.
I mean I had two teenagers and didn't want to do that again,
but he's loved bringing them up.
- Last time we talked about a bit of tension
in that area.
- No, I think that was probably just the age they were
and every family goes through that.
There was nothing in particular, I don't think,
it was just all part of growing up really.
- It wasn't easy being a single mother, was it?
- No it wasn't and I look back on it now
and I'm just amazed how I got through it.
- What was the toughest part of it?
- Probably a combination of not having enough money
to do what you want and being alone
and being scared when things happen,
when things go wrong,
which they always do when you've got kids.
You've got no one there to turn to
to talk about things like that.
- And you had to work?
- Yeah I had to work, yeah,
but I was always only part-time
so that I could fit it around school.
- So who was the biggest help to you
during this whole single parent?
- Well there's no doubt at all without my mom and dad
I'd have never survived it, they were brilliant,
they were really really good.
They mean the world to the kids
and they used to look after them,
always be there if something happened
and I had to go somewhere.
- Yeah nice aren't they, it's the first time we've seen.
- And how are they doing now?
- Yeah they're fine, dad's 80 now and mom's 78.
I'm so lucky that they're still reasonably active.
There you go, that's lovely that one, isn't it?
I've still got Catherine with me
because she hasn't found anywhere else to go.
I mean I'm sure she would love to leave me,
but I love it the fact that she's here.
We go shopping and we do girlie things,
do each other's hair and things like that,
so I would miss her but I do,
I know that she needs to get out and move on.
- I only had to have one filling,
that was about the only thing I had done.
- And what about William?
- Well, he went to Australia for a year
and he never settled back in being independent.
I think it was too much,
plus his room here was far too small.
I mean his computer was bigger than the room.
So he's renting.
It's just so hard for them to be able to afford something,
so in the future your kids are gonna be with you
for a long, long time.
A lot of my work is involved in making bookings
and dealing with hotels abroad.
- At 21, Sue worked for a travel agent.
At 35, part-time for a building society.
- Everything's changed for me 'cause I'm now
supporting myself a lot more than I was say a year ago.
- At 42, she went back to work full-time,
helping to run the courses in the legal faculty
of Queen Mary College, University of London.
At 49, she was the main administrator
for their post graduate programme.
So you like the responsibility?
- Yeah I love the responsibility.
I think I was born for the responsibility.
I'm now the coordinator of the entire programme,
so sort of Marge in charge really of them.
It's like my baby really,
I've nurtured it from its small beginnings
into what it is now.
Thank you very much, see you at graduation, yeah.
I really do enjoy it and I get up in the morning
and I don't ever think, oh god I can't face going in to work
but I know that happens to a lot of people,
so I'm lucky really.
Someone's having trouble downloading this attachment,
so I'll take this down for them.
- So you've got a lot of responsibility,
is there stress attached to it?
- Sometimes, I mean some parts of the year
are busier than others and you've got deadlines to meet,
but then in a way that's good
'cause it keeps you on your toes you know, never get bored.
- Where does the life of my respectable middle class mother
overlap with a working class slapper
who leaves her illegitimate child on a church door step?
- She was not...
- You don't know, she was young and frail and beautiful.
- It started not long after the last programme,
with Tony my neighbour, and he belonged to the group.
And I said, oh you know I've been wishing I could do
drama for years, since I was at school
and he said come along.
♪ That's the time you must keep on trying ♪
♪ Smile, what's the use of crying ♪
To stand on the stage and sing and have people
hopefully appreciate it, hopefully,
but there's still that little nervous thing,
the butterflies in your stomach when you're waiting
for the curtains to open, and it's a buzz really.
Realistically this is the point you really do
have to consider, you can't do two modules
that are taught at the same time obviously.
When I get on the stage to speak to 400 students,
now some people would find that very daunting
but I actually don't because I think if you know
that they can never ask you something
you don't know the answer to,
then I think that helps build your confidence
and I'm not exactly shy, am I.
It always takes one you see, once you get one
then other people tend to ask, but.
- You never went to university and now
you're right in the middle of a huge university machine.
- I suppose I should count my blessings
that I'm actually in a university having not done it myself.
Yeah. - Looking at it,
do you wish you had had that opportunity?
- Not really, it's the same as anything.
Why look back and say I wish I'd did this,
I wish I'd done that.
I've had a good career, at least I'll have my own home,
which is a new thing for my family,
'cause my mom and dad are obviously still
in a council place.
I'll never be a rich pensioner,
I'll never be able to travel the world once I retire,
I'm afraid, but as long as I can keep the house warm
and we can feed ourselves I think that will be fine.
- I don't like big boys hitting us
and a Prefect sending us out for nothing.
- When he was seven,
Paul was in care in a children's home in London.
Were you happy at the children's home in England?
- We didn't mind that really,
because we didn't know what was going on
'cause we were a bit young then.
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 step-mother
in a suburb of Melbourne.
Would you like to get married, Paul?
Tell me why not?
- I don't like,
say you had a wife,
say you had to eat what they cooked you
and say I don't like greens, well I don't.
I know I'd prefer to be alone, really.
I can't say I don't want to get married,
'cause I think I do,
but I want to be happily married
and therefore I want to make sure I think.
- What was it that you fell in love with,
what is it about him?
- His helplessness, I suppose,
it was the motherly instinct in me
to pick him up and cuddle him,
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, alright I will one day."
We had our 20th wedding anniversary this last Christmas,
just before Christmas. - Which is a life sentence.
- Yeah everyone recons that we should be out of jail by now.
- To a certain extent we started thinking,
well do we really know each other now,
because you just get in the humdrum
of going to work, coming back home.
- Running kids here and there.
- The kids here and there, and I don't think you mean to,
but you probably stop thinking about each other a lot.
- You know, it's still the last person you want
to see at night before you go to sleep
and the first person you want to see when you wake up.
- Do you still like to cuddle and love
and all that sort of stuff?
- Yeah, but not in public.
- No, yes.
- But is the chemistry still there?
- Yes.
- You don't sound sure.
- Well, we like to keep it private.
- I had to wait for the answer.
I find it hard to express emotion most of the time,
although I'm getting on top of that more now.
I mean just the simple thing to say to Suzanne,
you know, I love you, something like that.
I mean I can tell you that,
but I really haven't been able to say it really
to Sue, you know.
It's a bit hard to talk about;
I did end up having to get a bit of help.
It wasn't directly due to our relationship,
it started at work unfortunately,
which brought my self-esteem down
which tended to affect everything else.
I know the lack of confidence is there,
it still applies to me but I don't dwell on it,
it's there and I have to
put up with it. - Yeah.
I just think you take on a little bit more
of each others' personality because whenever I was decisive
and I made a decision and say, well let's do this because,
Paul, not that he couldn't make the decision
but he had all these questions to ask and I used to think,
ah, stop asking questions
and I suppose now I start to questions myself,
well maybe you should ask the question so it is
that bit of living with the other personality.
- I was gonna be a policeman
but I thought how hard it would be to join in.
I was gonna be a Phys Ed teacher but one of the teachers
told me that you had to get up in to university.
- As a young man, Paul spent many years
in the building trade and then moved on into factory work.
- Okay the question was Gracie Field
sang in the what of the moonlight.
It's a retirement village with independent living
and then it's got a sister living in the hostel
which is mainly where I work.
Which has got six letters, Gracie Field sang.
They have their own laundry, it's a complete unit,
they have their own lock up garage.
So there's a couple of parcels there
that probably need delivering.
And that's why Paul's there, I call him the man
about the house at work because he changes light globes,
problems with their taps they go and check it out,
cleans the guttering, fixes squeaky doors or doors
that have broken 'cause the village is now 24 years old
so the maintenance is starting to gather.
How are you going up there, Paul?
- When the job came up, I said to Suzanne
that if there was any problem at all
with us working together then I'd leave.
But so far we've found it really quite good.
Hello, how are ya?
- I'm good, Paul, how are you?
- I've probably always been a little bit more relaxed
around older people probably.
I always liked older people
as I was growing up, funny enough.
- By the time they were 28,
Paul and Sue had two children, Katie and Robert.
Katie did well at school and went on to university,
the first person in her entire family ever to do so.
Robert trained as a car mechanic.
He met his wife Stacey when they were teenagers,
and now they have five children.
- So there's Lucas, who is nine,
then there's Ryan who's about to turn seven
at the end of this month.
Then there's Hayley who's just turned five
and she'll start school in the new year.
Then there's Shane or better known as Shane-o,
and he is three this week.
He's the joker, I think, out of the lot of them,
You know if he does something and you laugh,
he'll laugh with you, and he loves a joke.
And then there's little Troy that's 12 weeks old.
I look back at my grandmother,
and I've taken some wonderful lessons from her.
Grandma made us all feel that we were her special number one
but I really think that that's the secret
to being a grandparent is to make every child feel
that they have someone that they can relax with,
be themselves with.
Grandparents now have a really huge part to play
in their parents' lives because the pressure's on them
to work so much and grandparents fill that hole
of Mum not being home every day.
So, Cynd, I've already made the frog in the ponds,
so there they are for the kiddies.
- Great, your Rich likes fairy bread.
- Get some spiders and snakes in there.
♪ Happy birthday to Shane-o ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪ - Ready, set, go!
- It's a real struggle for them financially,
but at the same time, you know, like all young kids
there's areas that we look at and go,
"Well, we didn't have that."
I've got 23 new pieces
and I don't know how many halfpenny pieces I've got now.
- Look there's a whole stack of duckies over there.
None of our kids have got credit cards.
They don't live a credit life. - Yet.
- Yet, I mean they try and pay as they go,
which is what we've always thought,
and that's kept our head above water, just.
We always thought if we were unemployed or out of work,
if you own your house, you've got a huge buffer,
and Robert's of the same belief.
- In their 20s, Paul and Sue sold up,
bought an old van and travelled across Australia.
- I think it brought us closer together,
because we really got to know each other
and we relied on each other so much.
- One of the most important things we ever did
with our children was spend time with 'em,
and particularly when you've got holidays.
You know, go camping with 'em.
- [ ]sue] Well we went over to visit Katie
'cause she's was working up in the top end
of Yorkshire on a community farm.
- We were missing her, we just don't wanna tell her that.
- Well they miss you when you're away.
Do you miss them when you're away?
- I didn't miss 'em. like oh God, I want to be around them
but I thought about them a lot
and appreciated them a lot which is probably good.
- So are the three of you getting on well?
- Yeah most of the time.
- As long as we're not in the car getting lost.
- They're atrocious in the car.
- But other than that we're good.
- No, it is good.
Well when we were in London we went to Greenwich.
It was built as a Maritime Retirement Village almost.
For the sailors from the Napoleonic War.
So that was all really interesting
because we work in retirement villages.
And these buildings here
were built before Australia was even discovered.
So that's pretty amazing.
Katie was in awe of it.
Because in her degree she did art history.
So she just loved it.
- What does university mean?
- Are you going to try and point
your grandchildren in to education do you think?
- You want them to have a good education
no matter what they do.
- Better than you had maybe?
- But that's my fault really.
I mean I just didn't work hard enough I guess.
You hope the school systems have changed
to encourage kids to go on
because one thing you can't take away from people
is an education.
I mean the one thing my daughter's taught me
is it doesn't matter what you do there's room for all of us.
And even to the point where
if you don't work you're still teaching us something,
you know your teaching other people to care.
- How are you dealing with getting old?
- I don't think you really notice it.
I mean you still think you're the same.
Its maybe when you try to do
something physically too quickly and pull a muscle
that just reminds you that your getting older.
- Are you fearful of the future?
Of disability or unable to do things?
- You hope that you're going to be one of the
fortunate ones and not get ill in any way.
- Hey Ken.
- Hi Paul, how are you?
- Maybe where I work, I may have helped that recently
because people just tend to get on with their lives
no matter what.
- And then that's the one with the palace.
- You've got a nice shot of a bin there.
- That one's good you're getting better,
you are getting better.
- Do you measure your life in terms
of success and failure in any sense?
- No not really.
I mean I suppose the success is that we're sitting here
together and we haven't had tragedy happen to us.
- It's just about getting on with life
and enjoying our grandchildren, our children,
and our friends.
- Yeah, our goals of life have never...
- And then work just gets in the way.
- Well we pretend we've got swords
and we make the noise of the swords fighting
and when somebody stabs us we go ahh.
- Neil grew up in a Liverpool suburb.
And had dreams of going to Oxford, but didn't get in.
Instead he went to Aberdeen University
but dropped out after the first term.
At 21, Neil was working on a building site
and living in a squat.
- I would like to be somebody in a position of importance
and I've always thought this.
But I don't think I'm the right sort of person
to carry the responsibility for whatever it is.
I always thought well I'd love,
to be possibly even love to be in politics
or something like this.
- At 28 we found Neil homeless
wandering around the west coast of Scotland.
- If the money runs out
well then for a few days there's nowhere to go to.
That's all you go do.
I simply have to find the warmest shed I can find.
- At 35, he was living in a council estate
on the most northerly part of Britain, the Shetland Islands.
What would you like to be doing say in 7 years?
- I can think of all kinds of things
that I'd like to be doing.
The real question is what am I likely to be doing.
- What are you likely to be doing?
- That's a horrible question.
I tend to think the most likely answer is that
I will be wandering homeless around the streets of London.
Can I just point out some of the considerable disadvantages?
First of all they are geographically...
- At 42, Neil had moved to London
and was a Liberal Democrat on Hackney Council.
- While I was in Shetland I felt very strongly
that I should become involved in politics
simply because I felt I was not achieving
anything in the ways I really wanted to.
- By 49, Neil had left London,
moved to Cumbria in the North West of England,
and was a Liberal Democrat member
of his local district Council.
- Fairly simple.
It was a committee decision, a majority decision,
his own group on the establishment committee
agreed with the decision.
- Counsellor Hughes.
- Well for Council Nines information,
Counsellor Cook has reconsidered his opinion
that he entered at that meeting.
Here we are in the centre of the ward
I represent on the Council,
these are our public toilets.
I can assure you that no more fierce battle
has ever been fought either on the playing fields
or indeed on the battlefields of England
to save what might appear to be a comparatively
insignificant local amenity.
- It sounds vaguely comic
but presumably it's not to you?
- When you live in a small community
you become very proud rightly of the facilities here.
And people are willing to play a part
in helping to keep them going
but they don't want to be ignored,
they don't want to be marginalised.
My strength is being able to keep going really.
And my weakness is not being able
to take any positive course of action.
No formal education can prepare anybody for life.
Only life can prepare you for what comes.
And sooner or later you're going to
have to cross certain barriers.
There are a few things I would like to say.
And the first thing to say is
there's been tremendous goodwill towards the series.
But I'm also aware that I'm not the only participant
who wants to set the record straight in a number of ways.
For so many millions of people,
I'm here wearing my heart on my sleeve
and they think they know absolutely everything about me.
There were countless people writing to me
saying I know exactly how you feel.
And actually from those letters I would say none of them,
not a single one of them, knew exactly how I was feeling.
- I've got a great deal of respect for the Liberal Democrats
but I think that I won't vote for them this time...
- Here in Cumbria I'm really glad to be doing what I do,
to be representing people at a local political level,
but in one sense I'm doing that
because it's the only way I've been able to make any money.
I get a derisory amount of money for being a Counsellor.
I do enjoy the work but I've been completely unsuccessful
in trying to find a paid career of any kind.
I have always wanted to write as a career
and indeed have written huge amounts
and ironically despite appearing in this programme,
so frequently nobody has ever shown any serious interest
in any of the work I do and believe me
it's a great deal more important to me
than anything I can say on a television screen.
Even if somebody sent it back to me
and said well I've read it and its rubbish actually,
that would be very demoralising
but at least some interaction would have taken place.
There's hardly a day goes by when I don't write.
- It's a great gift isn't it?
- It is but it shouldn't be a sort of masturbation
about which nobody else knows anything.
- Neil Hughes is the Liberal Democrat candidate.
- I and the Liberal Democrats
want to see a just and fair society in which everyone...
- In 2006, I was invited to go to Australia
to give a talk and the chap who introduced me said
Neil is clearly such a profoundly motivated politician
that we can all expect to see him as Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom in the future.
Now this wasn't a joke I assure you
he said this with absolute seriousness.
Now it was ludicrous but this is how wildly skewed
the perceptions have become.
I mean do you think I would really
have been invited to Australia if they were aware
that I was someone who lives on a few quid a week benefit
and has as much chance of changing the future
of the United Kingdom as
I don't know someone who's serving a lifetime jail sentence.
Yes I'd say I believed in God.
- Are you religious?
- Well I go to church with my parents on Sundays.
I don't know even now whether I do believe in God or not.
I've thought an awful lot about it actually
and I still don't know.
- And how has he been treating you?
- Well I said to somebody last week
that I preferred the Old Testament to the New Testament
because in the Old Testament God is very unpredictable
and that's I think how I've seen him in my life.
And Doreen as well and also...
I was first a Lay Reader in London
after completing a little more training
I was relicensed by the Bishop of Carlisle.
Well good morning, welcome to our service today.
Just a couple of notices first.
If you haven't already been told the proposed pet show
is unfortunately cancelled due...
I'm a Lay Minister.
I'm licenced to carry out quite a number of functions
which includes leading services, preaching,
taking part in the readings,
helping to distribute the Communion and so on.
In fact I can do more or less everything a Priest can do.
To what extent am I a good model for others?
I don't know.
On the other hand I am angry that so many doors
have been closed not just for me but for so many people.
I do feel nobody's listening out there,
you know there seem to be few currents
that are encouraging people to stand up for their rights,
not just their strict legal rights
but their rights to be human.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.
I'm not unappreciative of the honour its been
to be able to serve the church,
to be able to serve my community,
and I want to make that absolutely clear
and it's true that I think it was Abercam who said
life is what happens while you're waiting for something else
but it's not the sort of place
where someone who wants to change society is best employed.
I would have thought that was pretty obvious.
In the winter if you live in the country it would just
be all wet and there wouldn't be anything for miles around.
We're a very quiet village.
There's always room for more activity
and for more people being involved
but I think we do fairly well as a diversity of groups.
They're still trying to persuade me to go in.
Actually apparently Alan has cried off at the last minute
so there's just the two of them.
I think it was Pascal,
the great Philosopher and Mathematician,
who said that if a man can live happily
in his own living room for most of his life
then he's achieved the upmost philosophical breakthrough
and philosophically speaking that's true but I can't.
You only stick me in my living room for one hour on my own
and I want to be out doing something,
I want to be out changing things.
I have always had a nervous complaint.
I've had it since I was 16.
It was responsible for my leaving university
and for some of my difficulties with work.
- Do you worry about your sanity?
- Other people sometimes worry about it.
- Like who?
- As I've 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.
I don't see any way out.
I've thought of everything I possibly could,
it seemed to me for a long time that getting a reliable job
and a nice place to live would be the solution.
Well I haven't succeeded.
I can't see any immediate future at all.
Although there have been times in my life
when I've been suicidal, that wasn't one of them.
- So there have been worse than what we saw?
- Yes, but it's not for this programme to expose my
private feelings and yet many people feel it has ultimately.
Although this time round, I've been far more candid
than I perhaps ever have in the past.
My formal contact with the psychiatric establishment
belongs mostly to my need in later teens
and a short period in my early twenties.
But I soon came to the opinion that
I could help myself far better than
those who were purporting to help me.
But I was aware even then
that a lot of the therapeutic technique is about
leading people to exactly this conclusion if its unwell,
so I'm not going down the line of criticising
the medical establishment.
- But did you refuse to
go in to any sort of treatment?
- No, I did have contact.
- But then you discontinued it?
- Yes.
- Do you still think that was wise?
- Yes.
- Are you scared of getting old?
- Yeah I don't want to live to be that old.
I think if I can reach something like 70 or 75
in reasonable health, that will be quite enough for me.
When I get married I don't want to have any children
because they are always doing naughty things
and making the whole house untidy.
I always told myself that I would never have children.
- Why?
- Well because children inherit something from their parents
and even if my wife were the most high spirited,
and ordinary, and normal of people
the child would still stand a very fair chance
of being not totally full of happiness
because of what he or she will have inherited from me.
- Have you ever really had
a romantic, emotional relationship?
- Well I've had several
but the fact that I'm living alone still
obviously portrays the fact that none of them has endured.
- Is there a reason for that?
- Relationships always involve two people.
- But the string of failures
does that tell us something?
- Well I'm sure it does.
Any fool can see that, I'm not saying you're a fool.
- And what does it tell us?
- It tells you what you like,
it tells you that I haven't been
successful in relationships.
It may tell you that I'm intolerant
but more likely it tells you that I don't have the capacity
for making a relationship work.
But I must stress again that it does take two.
I have never walked out of any relationship with anybody.
It sounds like ghostly coloured people.
You think of a purple person with red eyes and yellow feet,
it can't really think of what they really look like.
I find it hard to believe that I was ever like that
but there's the evidence.
And probably when I was 7 I just lived in a wonderful world
where everything was sensational on,
I could be happy and I could be miserable the next minute.
- What makes you happy?
- Happy is a difficult word, how many people are happy?
Perhaps we're most happy when we're not aware of it
and enjoying a relaxed meal with some friends,
just being with friends.
I think the few weekends in the year
when I'm lucky to be able to go and stay
with some of my long term friends I'm really happy.
I can think of hardly anything better than
walking across the fields when we just chat
about the things we're both interested in
and our aspirations and I think that's the noblest
and in many ways most satisfying of relationships
you could possibly have.
How it would be if we live next door to each other?
I don't know it might be very different
but maybe the joy in some relationships
is that you see some people only infrequently.
- I don't think you want to go to university
if you want to be an astronaut.
Watch this.
- Peter and Neil were childhood friends
growing up in Liverpool.
Peter went to a comprehensive school
and went on to get a history degree from London University.
- I would like to think that democracy is here to stay,
perhaps we haven't got full democracy.
In fact we probably haven't, it's a pretty good system.
- Are you surprised
by the way England's been governed?
- I'm not surprised with the people
that govern it at the moment, no.
I've even stopped being amazed.
- Why?
Well I don't want to get dragged in to party politics
you know basically this is the most incompetent,
uncaring bloody shower we've ever had.
- After 28UP,
Peter decided not to continue in the film.
- Why did you pull out?
- I pulled out because of
the responses and the reactions that
my participation drew in the weeks afterwards.
Particularly in the tabloid press.
They decided they were going to portray me
as the angry young Red in Thatcher's England.
Well it's just the principle that's all.
I think it was articulating at the time
what a lot of people my age and my background
were thinking and I was an easy target.
But I was absolutely taken aback,
completely genuinely shocked at
what I saw as the level of malice and ill will
directed towards me.
Until you have experienced it yourself
you can't begin to appreciate how it feels.
- So now your back, why did you come back?
- I feel a lot happier with myself,
happier in my own skin, and then secondly more specifically
because I want to promote the music and the band I'm in.
♪ It was a goers town ♪
- And what are you called?
- We're called The Good Intensions.
♪ But when he hit that bang ♪
I'd always played in rock bands,
some of the spectacularly bad bands.
What really got me into this music was
being exposed to the music of Grant Parsons.
Because way back in the day I was a big Elvis Costello fan
and I read an interview with him in which he said
well if you think I'm a good song writer
listen to this guy Grant Parsons.
It was almost like an epiphany.
It was like I was hearing the music
I'd been waiting to hear all my life.
Once Kellen Zeffer said she loved me
and I'm going to marry her when I grow up.
It doesn't appeal to me at all at the moment.
I'm just gone 20.
I haven't even been abroad yet in my life.
So no way am I going to settled down.
- So what do you want to do?
Do you want to sort of record me and Pete,
to record what we are doing and you'll work round it?
- I think that's good.
- We were working in an office together
when we joined the office band
and that's how we got to know each other.
- So Gabby, was it love at first sight?
- Well I had a sneaking suspicion that Pete liked me
'cause he was really rude and sarcastic to me all the time
so I thought oh, I think he's probably quite keen.
- No, that's not true.
- You've always played together since then?
- Yeah more or less.
We probably stopped for a while when the kids were little.
- Our boy's 19, our daughter is 16.
- And how are they doing?
- They're great, they're really good.
- They're remarkably well.
Our son is in his first year at university
and our daughter is coming up to her GCSE's.
Once you have your own kids you have this huge realisation
of how your own parents felt about you
and what they did for you.
- What's the greatest gift
that a parent can give a child?
- It's that unstinting love and support and their time.
The time I think children value that more than anything.
You giving unconditionally, you giving them your time.
Well if I can't be an astronaut
I'd like to be a Bridewell Sergeant in the police force
like my dad is.
- So are you under pressure to get a job?
- Yeah I suspect I am from the parents,
they keep dropping hints.
Teachers are under valued and under rated
and the whole the system is beginning to crumble.
People outside of it don't realise that
but it is and it's very disillusioning.
I left teaching not long after that programme.
It was actually nothing to do with the programme.
That was a misunderstanding at the time
I think which took hold in the press.
I'd been planning to leave teaching anyway
and I just didn't see the long term future in it for myself
and I just thought I had to be honest with myself about that
and honest to the kids I was teaching at the time
and move on to something else.
- It might be better to start off at the end of the line.
- After teaching Peter studied law
and joined the Civil Service.
Gabby also works there.
- The Civil Service despite changes currently taking place
is still a comparatively a pretty decent employer.
So shall we do one of the new ones?
- What area of the Civil Service are you in?
- Department for Work and Pensions.
- So you've changed the key in that one?
- I've changed the key to an F sharp, sorry about that.
- Oh, marvellous.
- You've got MP3, I assume.
- When Pete writes he often wants to share that,
and at a fairly early stage, talk about what he's writing
and if it's no good I have to tell him.
And that's quite difficult isn't it?
- I'm sure it is, yeah.
♪ She was running down roads I didn't know ♪
- So when we started work on the album we're doing now
Pete said to me I've got 120 song ideas I want to go through
and I said but of those 120
really we need to get it down to about 10
so I am going to have to tell you that 110 are no good.
- How do you take criticism?
- Well I think I take it better than I used to.
- That's not setting the bar very high though is it?
- No.
- What have been for you the best times?
- Tommy Smith scoring the second goal in Rome.
Definitely one of the all times.
- Which game was that?
Which game was that?
That European Cup Final 1977.
That's still up there by the way.
- But along with what?
- But well getting married for the second time,
and having two children
have been hugely significant moments in my life.
- What do you want out of life?
- The satisfaction of knowing
that I've left some sort of imprint
rather than just lived out my life.
♪ You've been gone for so long eventually ♪
♪ No one's looking for you anymore ♪
I hesitate to say to think I have made my mark now
because that sounds horrendously vain
but I've created a body of work of which I feel very proud.
I feel I've achieved something of lasting value.
And in the last two or three years
we have began to become reasonably successful
in terms of critical responses.
We were voted the UK's Americana Act of the Year
at the British Country Music Awards.
From time to time like anybody else,
I'll look back and think I wish I hadn't done that
or I wish I'd done that differently
but I don't think really life is there to be regretted.
Life is there to be lived.
And I think the most important thing
is to feel that by enlarge you haven't compromised too much
and that you've moved your life on where
you want your life to go.
- And what about the other children?
Where are they now?
What are they doing?
- I would like to get married when I grow up.
I mean I know its not possible to be happy all the time
but as much of the time that was possible.
- When I grow up I'd like to
find out all about the moon and all that.
It would seem really ridiculous
to any of my friends who watched this
if I said Christ aren't I a great success look at me.
- When I get married I'd like to have two children.
I don't like babies.
- I feel like bundling when there's already a fight.
I think I admire people with great determination.
Like people who have just come up from nothing.