- 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 ground-breaking series of films,
we have followed their lives every seven years.
They are now 46.
Lynn, Sue and Jackie grew up
in London's East End and were friends at school.
- With this school we do metalwork
and woodwork and the boys do cookery.
All you girls want to do is walk out, get married,
have babies, and push a pram down the street
with a fag hanging out the side of your mouth.
- I think that we all could have gone in any way
that we wanted to at the time within our capabilities.
- But we only had a limited choice anyway,
I mean truth be told we didn't have a choice
of private education because they
couldn't have afforded it anyway.
- Our lives are changing far too much all of us.
- Well to be honest when you look at the seven-year-old us
it's difficult to believe it is us.
- I've got to say it girls I wanted to work in Woolworths.
- I'm glad you said that 'cause everyone thinks it was me.
- I would like to get married when I grow up.
Well I don't know what sort of boy
but I think one that's not got a lot of money
but has got some money, not a lot.
- Have you got any boyfriends?
- That's personal isn't it?
- By the time she was 21 Jackie
had married Mick and moved to the outskirts of London.
She and Mick had decided early on
that they didn't want to have children.
- Basically I would have said it's
because I'm far too selfish.
- By 35, she was divorced.
- We decided ourselves, I mean just between the two of us,
we knew it wasn't going any further.
We both knew I think that at the end of the day
we would be happier leading our own lives.
And this one on, here you go, oh yeah.
I had a brief but very sweet relationship,
the result of which was Charlie.
I don't really want Charlie to be an only.
I'd love him to have brothers and sisters
but not necessarily loads of them, one would do actually!
Right Charlie there's yours.
And please eat it all up.
And James.
- Thanks mum.
- Good boy, and last but not least.
Are you going to eat that one for me?
- After her relationship
with Charlie's father ended, she met Ian and they moved
to Scotland and had two sons
- James.
- By 42, they had split up.
- Lee.
- At 49, despite the split,
the family were living in the same area of Scotland.
Seven years later, they are still there.
So tell me who lives where?
- Lee will be here until October.
James is here until he moves in with his girlfriend
which I'm hoping won't be too long.
Charlie has actually already moved out because
of his dad, or their dad I should say,
because Ian's been diagnosed with cancer
and its stage four so it's quite advanced.
Oh yeah, he likes a thrill.
You know what he's like.
- The strange part about this is his
mother's also got cancer as well.
- Your grandmother?
- Their grandmother.
Hey come on swans!
She's brilliant.
If I could have chosen a mother-in-law
she was the one that I would have chosen.
She's great for me, she's absolutely brilliant
with the children and she's just always
there when I need her to be.
She's terminal.
- How long's she got?
- Don't know.
Not too bad.
They don't know how long.
I think they're talking months rather than years
and to have mother and son suffering
the same sort of thing is very difficult.
- She doesn't want us to sit around and feel sorry
and be sad she wants us to get on and live our lives
and it's not stopped her from trying to live her life.
- It seems to have been
one thing after another really.
My step mum died, my brother-in-law died,
my sister's died, she wasn't 40.
She'd actually gone downstairs and made herself a cup of tea
and collapsed on the way back up to her bedroom
and that was a major brain haemorrhage.
- So boys, how is your mother handling all this?
- In her stride.
- Nothing seems to be getting to her, it's just...
- She's always been a strong woman.
She will be upset but she won't let us see it.
She always puts on a brave face in front of us
but when she's alone or with her friends
that's when she gets the sadness out.
- This is a period
when the four of you feel close?
- We've got to be there for each other in things like this.
- Actually, I would say in the last six months
they've all suddenly seemed to have gotten a new maturity.
My mum cause she's got five girls,
she had seven years bad luck,
that's why she's got five girls.
- Two club sandwiches on brown bread,
one Hilton burger with cheese.
- Charlie is a sous-chef
in a nearby hotel, and James works part time
as a security guard in a local super market
- Check two aisles up from your current location.
I'm expecting a baby in December, I'm still young obviously
so it was a bit of a shock but I am excited about it.
- How old are you now?
- 19 coming on 20
- Okay and can I ask are you excited to becoming a gran?
- I don't know about that.
- She doesn't like being called granny!
- No, I will be gran, not granny.
Thank you!
Not nappy fill now please madam, oh look at the face.
Well since you were here recently we've had a new addition
to the family her name is Mya.
Mya was born on the 21st of November
and unfortunately on the 18th November her granddad,
Ian,the boys dad, was severely injured
in a road traffic accident.
He subsequent died of those injuries.
Unfortunately, he never regained consciousness
so he never even met her but he took a photo
of her in his coffin and I dare say he's looking down
and saying "ha I got away with it.
I've not got all those nights."
- I'm due to go in the army on the 17th of October
where I'll learn to become a medic.
- I mean I can't stop him now he's 18.
He can do what he likes.
He can sign on without my approval.
But it's a chance he takes and he knows that
there's a possibility that he won't come home.
- At the end of the day you're a soldier
and going out to war is part of being a soldier
and that's what you got to do.
- I want you to do it but it's not gonna stop me
worrying you know that, you know that.
I took a year off when I had Charlie
and the state kept me for that year
but I went back to work and although to be honest
by the time I pay everything out
I'm not actually that better off but I feel better.
James, you watch your catching up to him.
Go on Lee.
I was working up here until very recently
but they've discovered that I've got rheumatoid arthritis
so at the moment that's put work on hold.
Missy, come on then!
For every one good day I have I can have two bad,
which means I can't get out of bed very well.
It takes me two, three hours to get ready.
The poor, if you don't help them
they'll sort of die soon wouldn't they?
- Jackie has been living
on disability benefits for over 14 years.
- I don't cope financially, without my mother-in-law
stepping in to fill the gap I wouldn't be coping.
It's really hard to explain to anyone
who's not had to do it, you get to a point where either
that bill doesn't get paid or your children
don't eat, so obviously your children eat.
You can go to the charity shop and get them.
I'll never notice...
- So looking at the world
of cut backs how is this affecting you?
- I along with probably millions of other people
in this country have had my benefits reviewed
and they sent me for a medical and have come back
and told me I'm fit to work which is a bit of a shock,
what job can I do, I can't use my hands,
I can't sit for long, I can't stand
for long, I can't walk very far.
I don't know how they expect anybody to employ me
because I couldn't guarantee being there five days a week.
I mean I'm lucky in as much as I've got three sons
all working, whilst James here's got Mya
and a family of his own, Charlie and Lee don't
so they help me out and they have to.
By all means cut the benefits but you've got people
out there that are healthy and are milking the system
and they're not touching them, they're getting away with it.
If David Cameron can find me a job then I'll go to work,
if he can find an employer, you tell him
to come and get me a job and I'll do it.
Well I know he is hers and he loves her.
- I don't I love him.
- I'd like 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.
- Well what about your own life,
what about relationships for you?
- I would like a relationship.
I mean I've been trying for the last five years
to build up a social life of my own
because I knew that this time would come.
I've been using the internet
which is interesting to say the least.
- Is it scary?
- I mean you know some people have
obviously had bad experiences with it.
Yes.
- But there was a chap that we filmed when
we were looking at you and Liz, what happened to him?
- He decided he needed space.
So I gave him that space.
So that was a bit of a disaster.
But that's the way of relationships
sometimes they work sometimes they don't.
- What are you looking for in a fellow?
- A pulse would be nice!
♪ If I say that I love you ♪
♪ And you know it's true ♪
- You look great, you seem optimistic.
- Yeah, no I am.
My glass is always half full never half empty
and that's the way it will continue to be I hope.
Life's too short and you just have to try and go on the best
you can and I think my life's gonna be good.
- What sort of things do you do?
- Ride, swim, play tennis, ping pong.
I might play croquet, something like that.
- I don't think my father wants me to be a farmer.
My youngest brother, the deaf one, if he can't
do anything else he can probably run a farm.
I thought that you and I were both in the film
as being rural in the sense that your family had
some big connections to rural Scotland I thought.
- Yeah and I think also when we were 21 I seem
to remember having to go to some reunion
or something somewhere and I remember you just stuck out
as being the one person that I had more
in common with and spoke to the most.
Well I've played for the same four girls
for the last 25, 26 years.
- We've been emailing each other
since forty something...
- I think yes.
It was one night it was just, I think it was quite late
and I just threw a line at Nick.
So I said I'm going to bed now I said perhaps you
and I ought to do a double act
on the sofa and I went to bed...
- I'm not sure...
I mean...
- And you wrote back some funny message
that I picked up the next morning.
- Well no wonder I would wouldn't I?
- When I leave this school I'm down for Heathfield
and Southhill Manor and then maybe I may want to go
to a university but I don't know which one yet.
My home life wasn't very easy then.
I'd been sent off to boarding school when I was quite young.
My parents marriage was breaking up
and like a lot of children I think you feel
that you take the blame for why they've broken up.
That's just the way it was and I hated the two years
I was away at this first boarding school
and I think that was probably what changed me.
- Well I hated boarding school too with a passion.
I was forced to grow, I didn't choose it;
I definitely got some messages that said you're gonna
be in trouble if you don't do well and so on.
- But you don't regret it...
- No, no, no.
- And you wouldn't you wouldn't have the life you have now.
- Hey I'm grateful for it but it was very uncomfortable.
- I was never one to push myself forward.
- And nobody else was pushing.
- And no one else pushed me.
I left school when I was 16, went to Paris,
went to secretarial college and got a job.
- What made you decide
to leave school and go to Paris?
- Well I just wanted interested in school
and just wanted to get away.
- If you have had no choice but to get out there
and support yourself the chances would have been greater
that you would have forced yourself to do it.
- Yeah that's possibly true but at the age
of 11, 12, 13 are you really aware of that?
- Now that's a very telling question,
in my world you betcha.
When I grow I'd like to find out all
about the moon and all that.
And I said that I was interested in physics
and chemistry, well I'm not going to do that here.
- At 14 Nick was away at boarding school,
at 21 reading physics at Oxford.
His road to Oxford started in a one room village school.
- My father was here a long time ago
He must be somewhere in these pictures.
I remember distinctly coming here one day
and I'd missed a day for some reason
and they'd been talking about something
to do with aeroplanes and the teacher said we missed you
because you would have known about aeroplanes.
I knew nothing about aeroplanes
but I thought oh I know about aeroplanes do I?
So then I went off and read about aeroplanes,
so that could easily have been the start of I want to go
to the moon and I think she planted that idea in me.
- Do you have a girlfriend?
- I don't want to answer that.
I don't want to answer those kind of questions.
I thought that one would come up because when I was doing
the other one somebody said what do you think
about girls and I said I don't answer questions like that,
is that the reason your asking it?
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 but what about them?
- I mean if you'd been somebody who had had fixed ideas
of a woman's role in marriage that meant dinner
on the table at six every evening...
- Didn't I tell you about that?
- By 28 Nick had married Jackie,
a fellow student from Oxford.
They had a son Adam.
By 42 they were divorced.
- What I concluded and I've talked to other people
about this who've gone through it,
I'm not sure if they feel it as strongly
as I did but it was like a death.
- Anything could happen, we could easily drift apart;
there are so many pressures on people.
- If your spouse died you could look back
and think well it was wonderful while it lasted,
but in a divorce you can't look back
and say these are all happy memories.
- Hey Chris.
- Chris is my new wife.
I don't mean to be superficial but I think
she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
- Is he sexy?
- Oh man.
Absolutely.
Didn't you have fun with that one?
- Well I always need to learn patience
and, what do I need to learn?
- Shall I get out my list?
- Yeah I think we need the list.
- Go on.
- No.
- Tell me do you have any boyfriends Suzy?
- Yes
- Tell me about them?
- He lives up in Scotland and I think he's 13.
- Have you got any boyfriends Suzy?
What is your attitude towards marriage for yourself?
- Well I don't know.
I haven't given it a lot of thought
'cause I'm very very cynical about it.
- When I last saw you at 21 you were nervous,
you were chain smoking, you were uptight and now you seem
happy, what's happened to you over these last seven years?
- I suppose Rupert.
I'll give you some credit.
- I'm not chain smoking.
- No I think you can't just walk through a marriage
and think once you get married it's all gonna
be roses and everything forever.
It's very hard to actually say what it is that goes on
between a couple, it's either there or it's not.
Any marriage has its ups and downs but somehow
whether it's through luck or determination
we've worked through the difficult times.
- One of my favourite places in Oxford, Merton Chapel.
Here's this lovely top part of the cross
and there was going to be the main part of the cross.
This is one of the places in England
that just is tremendously important to me.
After I left the Dales this was where I spent
the next six years and then I went to America.
- Look at this isn't this beautiful?
This is Mob Quad.
I believe that it's historical fact that there
were quite a lot of students who were massacred
in the Middle Ages and for.
When I came here I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
But I was under an awful lot of stress all the time
I was here trying to succeed in this place as well.
- Okay, yeah so this was my staircase
in my first year and also on my third year.
There was this fella who lived in the room next door to me
and he came in one day to tell me some story
and on his way out he said "you know
I don't associate intelligence with your accent."
It would seem really ridiculous to any of my friends
who watch this if I said "Christ aren't I
a great success look at me, what success?
- By the time he was 28
Nick had emigrated to America.
He was doing research into nuclear fusion
at the University of Wisconsin.
- Tell me about the current drive.
- If you'd have been offered a similar
type of job over here...
- In a heartbeat.
- You would have stayed?
- In a heartbeat.
I mean I had dreamed of getting a university job over here.
Maggie Thatcher was squeezing the universities like crazy
at that very moment in time and it was the worst time
to be working in a university in generations.
England doesn't seem to concern itself
with training people like me and wanting them around.
There doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency
or a strong will to have people developing technology
to help keep the country going.
The fusion reaction gives off energy and produces
the power that would be turned into electrical energy.
I was on a mission you know to get
extremely cheap, clean plentiful electricity,
so nuclear fusion looked like it was going to do that
but even then they were saying it's twenty years away.
I would say absolutely not in my lifetime.
I mean it was kind of heartbreaking.
So I had to find something else to do.
So the area that I'm looking at is this times this.
When I go in to 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.
See, there's a method in my madness.
- Nick is a Professor of Electrical Engineering.
- That's really impressive, he was the guy.
And my ambition as a scientist is to be more famous
for doing science than for being in this film
but unfortunately Michael it's not going to happen.
- When I get married I'd like to have two children.
I'm not very children-minded at the moment,
I don't know if I ever will be.
- What do you think about them?
- Well I don't like babies.
- At 28 Suzy had two sons Thomas and Oliver.
- Don't touch it.
- By the time she was 34
she also had a daughter Laura.
- Mummy?
- Yeah
- Laura wants you.
- We were lucky we had a very good family unit
with them growing up and that meant an awful lot
to me that I was able to do that
for them 'cause I never had it for myself.
- And you've done it.
You've been tremendously successful at it.
- Well you see that's my problem.
I don't think as myself as being,
I just do my best and do what I can for them.
- Did all your children go to university?
Your daughter did?
- Yes and my son, the eldest one.
Hello.
I haven't had a successful career no,
but I do feel fulfilled and I mean I've done quite
a lot of different things over the last seven years.
You know we all make mistakes in everything
from parenting to decisions in life,
you make mistakes and that's how
you become the person you are.
- You can talk to me by myself outside
but I'll just meet your by the garage okay?
All right bye.
- Nick's son Adam
was 10 when his parents divorced.
- When he was first told he was terribly,
terribly upset and then he just pulled himself together
and didn't want to talk about it anymore.
Take it easy Adam the main thing is not to crash.
- Really you don't want me to crash right now?
- How's he deal with it now?
- He doesn't talk to me about it very much at all.
He's a private person.
He's getting more mature and he has
to be very patient with me really.
Can you imagine having me for a dad?
Do you think it would be a low-pressure existence?
Wow this is my little school.
I'm nuts and I would drive a kid nuts
with all my nagging, I mean I drive...
- Do you think you've pushed him
too far which is why he's now backing away?
- Anything I push him to do he's going
to do the opposite so there's a real you know.
They'd like to come out for a holiday in the country
when I like to have a holiday in the town.
It's a fixed reference point in a sense,
the sort of earthy life and death cycle
that you get living on a farm.
And so when something dies it rots
and feeds back in to the earth.
- He has a density to him.
One of the first things he said
to me is my feet on in the mud.
The whole idea of being deep in the mud and very attached
to a foundation makes good sense to me.
- Nick has two younger brothers,
Andrew and Christopher.
- Well I come up most weekends and then Chris gets up
usually in mid week so he helps with shopping
and stuff like that and does things around the house.
- We don't get over the England very often
and so you can count on one hand how many times
you're gonna see your family before somebody dies.
And that's getting more and more pressing every time
we come; you know, so yeah this is tricky.
- How are they doing?
- Not well, they're very old.
Yeah I don't really want to elaborate on that and you know.
- But it's full of emotion all this?
- It's all the stuff that we repress as hard
as we can isn't it, but yeah it really is.
I'm looking at these names and who they all are
but this of course is Granny Hitchon and Grandpa Hitchon.
When I was a little guy I got up at the crack of dawn
and scooted next door to spend the morning with her.
So yes when she died when I was five or six I think,
so I think I was devastated yeah.
- And you still remember her?
- Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
- I know you should let these things out
and I don't I store them up but that's
the character of me now and I can't change it.
- Thank you very much.
- Oh yes, thank you yes.
Nick is truly English.
I mean my father is English and I was probably
in my late twenties maybe early thirties
before I uttered the words I love you
to either one of my parents.
There is a difference, a distinct difference between
the type of English person he is and the type
of American people I've been with.
So I don't, you may know the difference too
Michael because you've been in both settings.
♪ If I say that I love you ♪
- What do you think about making this programme?
- I just think it's just ridiculous.
I don't see any point in doing it.
- Why is it that we are
so annoyed about this programme?
- I think the problem I have is
that you don't get a very rounded picture.
You get the odd comment that comes out on a particular topic
but because of the time restraint that this programme
obviously has otherwise we'd be on
for a couple of months if you were trying
to get everybody's real thoughts on things.
- It's just that the limitations of such things
as what the audience require and the time
don't allow it to be a real study.
I think I'd like to say this and I'd like to say that
and then they film me sort of doing all this daft stuff
and it goes on seven days out of every seven years.
It's sort of biblical something or other
and it's all this excitement and so on
and then they present this tiny little snippet
of your life and it's like that's all there is to me?
- When I go home I go and see my mother
and I have tea and watch TV.
And then I do my homework and I go and see my father.
Were they in the sixties trying to say that the fact
that I'd supposedly had a more privileged upbringing
that I should have been the one
who'd become the high flyer and that you...
- Absolutely.
- You having come, I mean I just think that's so wrong
but is that what they were trying to get at?
- The idea of looking at a bunch of people over time
and how they evolve that was a really nifty idea.
It isn't a picture really of the essence of Nick or Suzy.
It's a picture of everyman.
It's how a person any person, how they change.
You know just seeing me this age
and the next age with more wrinkles and more oh.
- I think we all have got a few of those.
- Oops.
- Oops
- It's not an absolute accurate picture of me
but it's a picture of somebody and that's the value of it.
- But then we're putting ourselves out to be that person.
I didn't want to do it when I was 14.
I know I was very difficult because I was very anti
doing it; I was pressurised in to doing it
by my parents and I hated it and I vowed
I'd never do it now but here I am.
I mean who knows in seven years
whether it will be done again
but this is me saying hopefully I'll reach
my half century next year and I shall bow out.
I don't know what happened.
I was quite adamant I wasn't going to do it
and then, I don't know I suppose I have
this ridiculous sense of loyalty to it even though I hate it
and that's just such a contradiction isn't it?
But, and also I think it's like reading a bad book.
I'll still read it.
I'll still see it through and I guess I'll put this down
to being a bad book but I'll see it through.
- Symon was brought up in a children's home,
the only child of a single parent.
- They say where's your father then?
You know, when your mum's out at work?
They say where's your father?
And I just tell them I ain't got one.
See, I can get on well with my mother sometimes.
We talk very well with each other
but it's sometimes not quite as mother
and son, sort of more like friends.
- When he was 34 Symon's mother died of cancer.
- There was so many things I never actually said to my mum
that, just things you think about afterwards
it's too late because they're not there anymore.
- What sort of things?
- I don't know, just I love you every day.
When I was born, an illegitimate child,
that's something that's only whispered about.
People feel strongly about it in those days
but nowadays 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.
- By 28 he had married
Yvonne and they had five children.
- They've got everything; they've even got what I never had.
- Which is what?
- A father isn't it?
So I mean they've had everything.
- By 35 they were divorced.
- At one stage they all stopped seeing me at all
but now a bit older, a bit wiser and I'm a bit older
and wiser and now three of them see me.
- At 42 he'd married Vienetta.
- We used to go out when we were younger.
We met in the launderette.
- Once a week.
- Once a week in the launderette.
- Vienetta already had a daughter,
Miriam, and she and Symon had 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.
Well today is Daniel's big, big day.
He's now 18 and he's a young man, he says, and he's done
very, very well with his schooling and everything.
- At the beginning of the week I received an email
saying that I got on to my apprenticeship
with Proctor and Gamble, which I'm very happy
and excited about and I start that
in the next couple of weeks.
- What I want to say is that I have had the proudest week
of my life with my son passing his exams.
He's passed his test and if when
and he runs through it he might get a car.
♪ Happy Birthday to you ♪
- But here people are undecided about you.
They can be your friend one day and not the next.
- Obviously when children come in
to foster care family and friends
are involved as well and we have
to ensure the children are kept safe and secure.
- By 49 Symon and Vienetta
had decided to train as foster parents.
- I went to boarding school when I was young
and I always felt that 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 in my own home.
- And we always say to foster carers please do not cut
the children's hair without the permission of the parents.
- So what's the toughest
thing about being a foster parent?
- You're taking a chance when you do it
because you really don't know what you're getting.
It's something that all children want is to be loved,
is to be wanted so if you can give
that to them then everything else is second.
- You know why Uncle Symon looks younger?
'Cause he's so laid back.
Some of them come back, they ring you up
and say hello Auntie, hello Uncle and how are you?
They come and have Sunday dinner.
They come and visit us which is good.
- I once tried to count
and I got up to 64 and I stopped.
- Because if you know that you're
going to get 50 people that Auntie kinda called.
She's like a mother to me.
She's always been there.
There was a time where I felt like I want to give up
in everything and she kept saying to me
"you have to keep on going, you have to keep on trying."
I'm getting emotional, sorry.
- When I came through the airport my family
wasn't at the airport to collect me and that
so I just had to stay somewhere for a temporary base.
I was here for I think about five to six years.
I couldn't have asked for anything better to be honest.
Yeah they were really, yeah really nice.
- Were you looked after at some point?
- My real mother died at birth and my dad remarried
and my mother who made me the person I am today
'cause she was always helping other young people
and she used to always say to us, "don't be jealous 'cause
you've got my love but they've got no one to love them."
You know?
- As well as fostering Vienetta
also works for an organisation that takes
homeless young people off the streets.
- And what happens to the fostering children
when you're here four days?
- Symon and I balance them together, we juggle.
Symon sometimes works late and then I rush home.
He'll do the school run in the morning.
I'll do the school run in the afternoon.
My job's very flexible.
- So you have incredibly busy life don't you?
- Very busy.
- Well we started to feel that we were getting tense
and tight and that normally means you need a holiday
'cause we found ourselves doing too much
so at some stage you gotta chill out.
- Symon took the family to Portugal.
- Oh look at this.
- So that's nice.
- That's quite, what do you think?
- It's blingy.
- That's really nice.
- So Jess is by your first marriage
and Mini's your child...
- Yes
- By your marriage.
And the relationship's strong?
- They know each other from being young.
They did things together, went out together.
So they're not like strangers.
- Before I'm old enough to get a job
I just walk around and see what I can find.
I was going to be a film star but now I'm going
to be an electrical engineer which is more to reality.
- By 21 Symon was working in the freezer room
of Wall's Sausages in London.
- I know I can't stay at Wall's forever.
I mean it's just not me.
I couldn't stay there for that long, my mind will go dead.
- Do you never feel that you should be doing
better jobs than these, aren't you worth more than this?
- No, I haven't really, I suppose
I just like hard work I don't know.
- The factory closed down.
Since then he has worked near
Heathrow Airport handling freight.
- If I'd pushed myself at school
probably I could have done a lot better.
- Does that give you pause for thought?
- No that means I was a lazy sod when I was younger.
- If we had got together when we should have got together
there's no way he'd have been a forklift driver
not where I am with no way, not with all that brains.
I've got common sense and he's got the brains.
- I am the proof that you need to push yourself and go on.
If you want to get on if you want things in life
you have to push yourself to keep going.
I should have been an accountant,
but I went in this office,
I looked at this grey, grubby office
and the people there looked gray-suited and miserable
and I thought this isn't for me.
I want to stay out in the fresh air, I don't want this.
Years later I realised that not every office is like that.
Some offices are vibrant and moving
but it was too late then I'd already sort of
stagnated myself driving forklifts
and working in a warehouse.
- You could have made
a lot of money being an accountant.
- Yes he could have.
- She looks after me.
She doesn't just push me she looks after me.
She would never let anything be wrong for me.
- Baked beans, I'll go and get the water.
- At one stage we went to a marriage guidance
'cause the pressures of being together
were getting to us because we are
two completely different people.
I'm very laid-back, as she always says
if I go any further back I'll fall over.
- Is the chemistry still there between you?
- Yeah.
- Yeah I think so.
- Yeah I hope so, is it?
- Yes darling.
- Yeah the chemistry's still there.
- Yeah, we've been saying that, what nearly twenty years?
- Is that all it is?
- Yeah.
Oh come on Symon hurry up, catch up.
- Come on Jess and Daniel.
- Do you think you could
ever retire and ever just chill out?
- There's people who I have noticed they stop work
and they have no other interests, they suddenly get old.
- Yeah so you're old. you've got a few bulges
a few wrinkles but life still goes on, enjoy life.
- So who won?
I came here first: I think that was me.
- How was it then?
- Beautiful, did I win and just allow you
to come in front of me?
- No, no.
- Dad you was like the person
that comes round on the tractor.
- I think I admire people with great determination,
like people who have just come up from nothing.
They build up their life from absolutely nothing.
- Well do you see some parts of life as success
and some parts are failure or do you not think like that?
- No you don't stop life
because you've made a mistake, you know.
- Though it may go down the wrong road
it doesn't mean that's the end of the road for you.
There's another chance you have
to turn round and come back and start again isn't there?
- Do a U-turn and to be honest
what do you think about our life?
- I think there's been more ups than downs
and hopefully there's a lot more ups to come.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And what about the other children?
Where are they now?
What are they doing?
- I'm going to work in Woolworths.
In my life I've been able to do more
or less what I wanted to do.
- My heart's desire is for me to see my daddy.
It all springs from I think God and Christ I suppose.
- I read the Financial Times
- It's very irresponsible because we all
want more money as much money as we can get.
- I want to be a jockey when I grow up.
Yeah I wanna be a jockey when I grow up.
- I'm as good or even better than most
of them people especially, on this programme.