The Up Series s01e05 Episode Script

1 I'm going to work in Woolworths When I grow up I want to be an astronaut When I get married I'd like to have two children My heart's desire is to see my Daddy I don't want to answer that This is no ordinary outing at the zoo it's a very special occasion we've brought these children together for the very first time they're like any other children except that they come from startlingly different backgrounds Stop it at once! We brought these children together because we wanted a glimpse of England in the year 2000 the shop steward and the executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old In 1964 World in Action made Seven Up we have been back to film these children every seven years they are now thirty-five Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man Is it important to fight? Yes! I want to be a jockey when I grow up yeah I want to be a jockey when I grow up At fourteen Tony was already an apprentice at Tommy Gosling's racing stables in Epsom he left school at fifteen This is a photo finish of when I rode at Newberry I'm the one with the white cap I was beaten a length and a half for third and had a photo finish so I took it out the box and kept it as a souvenir my greatest fulfilment in life when I rode at Kempton in the same race as Lester Piggot I was a naive, wet behind the ears apprentice all my years from seven, all my ambition was fulfilled in one moment and I eventually finished last tailed off obviously but it didn't make any difference to me just to be part of it to be with the man himself you couldn't buy it, that was the proudest day of my whole life Tony's now thirty-five at weekends he takes his girls to a stables where the family keeps a couple of ponies Hold onto them, come here, hold that brush hold that brush? What does it mean to you when you see the girls on a horse? There at times when I look back and I look at them and see myself in them all the time when I was a kid no one ever showed me how to ride a horse I had to sort of go out and do it myself no don't trot just walk him, I want you to walk round hold them reigns nice and properly when I see them riding I think I taught them that or see them doing this and think "Oh I'll show them another way" then once they learn it I pat them on their bums put them on automatic pilot and they're on their own well that's what life's all about isn't it giving your kids all the opportunities and the benefits that you never had don't be afraid, never be afraid, they know horses were my whole life, flesh blood in my veins it was, y'know, all the smell, everything Princess Anne to her horses and Lester Piggot to his - That's how I felt - And you let it go? I let it go Sometimes on Saturday morning I go to the cinema sometimes with my friends, sometimes with him - You don't - I do She don't I don't ever see you You go to a different cinema - Have you got a girlfriend? - No Would you like to have a girlfriend? No Do you understand the four F's? find them, feed them and forget them the other F, I'll let you use your own discrimination but I mean, this one I tried to do the three F's but I couldn't forget her I used to work in a pub just on a Friday nights, barmaiding and then from there one night I went to a discotheque he was in the pub earlier on and afterwards we went to a discotheque and Tony was standing there and I justfrom there that was it couldn't get rid of him We have our ups and downs, no more than anyone else I think you've got to work at a marriage I think all marriages go through stages you can't stand each other I think "Oh god I hate him I wish he'd get out" I do, and I'm sure he does about me I've been in positions y'know and well it's hard to say in front of Debbie but it's true it's tempting you take the bait I go on holiday once a year with the boys to Spain, Magaluf and we have a golf holiday, all against Debbie's will but it's true and I get in situations out there that y'know life is for living and I come back "Oh I know what you've been doing out there!" "you've been meeting all those birds!" and whatever and they look at you as if to say "I know but I don't want to know" that's how it is Who's to say in another ten years me and him might've split up Quite possible You don't know If you were to break up, what do you think it would be over? Yeah I think it would be the other party It wouldn't be for the kids 'cause the kids are everything without anything prior to that - Isn't it? - Yeah I mean it would break my heart knowing that another man could come in here and bring my kids up there's only one ambition really, I want a baby son and if I see my baby son that'll be my ambition fulfilled no one knows that, only you now Tony and Debbie had a son, Nicky who is now thirteen they have two daughters, Jodie and Perry and the family lives in North London Now listen, on Saturday Tottenham have got the Arsenal One I was expecting on Twenty-eight Up, when you filmed that but I lost that baby I didn't feel that I could have any more I really didn't want any more but then anyway I did and I had Perry they are naughty, they're very naughty they're the naughtiest kids I know Nicky's like me, he's more placid but Jodie's like how he was when he was seven I do discipline them I'll smack them, I'll put them in their rooms, I'll take things off of them I do it, I discipline them and he undoes it so I'm fighting twice as hard with them it just makes it harder for me because he's to soft with them Why do you think you're too soft with them? Because I love them so much Do you bring them up the way that you were brought up? The upbringing I had I saw more dinner times than dinners without any question and I did have my brothers clothes on my back for hand-me-downs it's never done me no harm I wouldn't have got away with it with my parents what my kids get away with But in saying that you do give them everything possible all these designer clothes type of thing the Naff gear and "Roe-buck" trainers Now, even my Nicky plays football and she will say "Nicky wants some trainers, have you got seventy quid?" so I'm like "What?" seventy pounds for a pair of trainers? hold on there's a stall round there, the same quality trainers for twenty-five quid or something she goes "Twenty-five pounds? oh no!" she'll say "he can't go to school wearing that rubbish!" she'll give him everythingthe kid we've got an old bike, it wants a chain put on and the nuts tightened or whatever "Oh can't have that bike! get a new one!" then next Christmas Only 'cause you don't put the chain and bolts on it! Oh I'm not that way What will you do if you don't make it as a jockey? Oh I don't know if I knew I couldn't be one I'd get out of the game wouldn't bother And what do you think you'd do then? Learn Taxi's At twenty-one, Tony was on "The Knowledge" learning to be a London cabbie I'm going to prove every person who thinks I can't be a cab driver wrong and I'm going to get that badge and put it right in their face just to tell them how wrong they can be and how under estimated I am At twenty-eight he had his own cab It's surprising who you pick up I once met Kojak, I picked him up and Warren Mitchell, Alf Garnett y'know Debbie's working in the day so Debbie will be on her way home by four o'clock the kids will be coming home for dinner Debbie will stop the cab outside and come in and cook the dinner then I'll sit down with the kids until about seven, whatever then I'll start the cab up 'cause we work the same cab then I'll go to work until about one until it goes again she's got a great mind, she's done "The Knowledge" which is, less than two years for a women with three kids and the pressures of running a family that's remarkable You get a lot of resentment still from other cab drivers some of them they just give you abuse some of them just sit there shaking their heads when they see you I get told to "go home and do the dishes" or "go home and cook your husbands dinner" I went to a Knowledge school and there I met other girls doing The Knowledge and we became quite friendly we meet on a certain rank at Knightsbridge and we go and have a cup of tea and walk round Harrod's get a sandwich, use Harrod's toilets have a little look round, spray the perfumes and the lipsticks Does he do his fair share of the house work? No he doesn't do a thing he doesn't even bring a cup from one room to the other I do everything - Sounds awful doesn't it? - Terrible Well I'm not chauvinistic, don't get me wrong, it's not a question of that I have a very luxurious life indoors and I'm not proud or ashamed to say it I'm just the way I am, I work as hard as I can outside and when I close that door the feet go up and I feel I deserve a rest Would everybody please sit round now, get on with their work I don't want to see any backs to me shouldn't be anybody turning round, Tony do you hear as well? get on with your work in front Tony! don't turn round again So what advantages do you think you've had over some of the people we've filmed? Well academically probably they've had more advantages over me owing to the fact they've had prep schools at a very early age they've benefited by it, which it tells obviously in this film but as far as a stability and the backgrounds with their parents they've missed out on that it was at February the ninth exactly ten minutes past nine Mother's having her last well at the time we never knew her last breath and she just died with me holding her hand and it was the worst moment of my life with respect to Debbie she was and still is the best girl in the world and, sorry, but East enders, they're all close to their mums and y'know, like everyone else, wherever you come from, but my mum and I have made it clear from when we done Twenty-one I just loved her that's right this is what I think isn't it I'd never met anyone like his mum in my life I doubt I ever will she was a lovely lady, she was a friend to me she wasn't a mother in-law and we used to go everywhere together, me and his mum I know my dad from the time of his life afterwards he died there and then, though he walked around until September this year When you buried him what did you put in his coffin? I put three playing cards and I put dice and a betting slip and a pen, 'cause that was my dad's whole life I'm at the grave side I'm talking to her I've got all the images running through my mind saying like "Tony go downstairs and get me five cigarettes" and I used to go in the shop she used to throw the cotton in a hair curler out the window and I used to tie the cigarettes onto the cotton and she used to pull them up and she goes I see her in the end "Thanks Tony, see you after school, be good" and that's the way it was all the little things like that mother having a drink in the pub singing "Don't worry about anything" she used to say "Don't care about nothing!" The posh ones? "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes!" they're nuts just have to touch them yeah theywell they can get what they want can't they? if you've got to work for it and it's them they can just ask for money and get it and they can buy what they want 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 and that's all I want to understand How long are you going to be a cab driver? is this what you want to do for the rest of your life? Well at the moment I'm very happy driving a cab but I always considered owning our own pub so obviously I think within two or three years once I get finally financially straightened out I'm going to have a go at being a publican we did eventually get a pub about eighteen months after wasn't it? we went into partnership with my brother in-law and I saw the pub going in one direction he saw it going in another one and after about eight months, a year wasn't it? we decided to call it a day - Look son it's hard work out there - Come on you're not reaching me yet At twenty-eight Tony was taking acting lessons - Be bigger, dominate me! - Son! 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 pardon the expression but could you do my inside leg He now works as an extra I'll have a go at anything, especially acting, I mean but talent? who am I to say? I'm not going to say I haven't but whose to say that anyone has I promise you I'm not, but it's just the job no more and no less all that "big eyes for stardom" probably happened fifteen years ago but not now it doesn't mean anything, believe it or not I don't want to change because if I change it proves the other Tony Walker was all fake I know and I've always said it there's never ever a thing in my life that I've set out to do that I've never achieved I wanted to be a jockey, thank god I rode in a race with Lester Piggot and I did it, I wanted to be in the film game, I got in it working with Steven Spielberg for two weeks on one of his films I made it happen on my terms and no one can say "I helped him" and I'm more stronger in that respect But you didn't pull it off, you didn't pull a jockey off you haven't made it as an actor you didn't pull off the pub Well it's better to be a has-been than a never-was isn't it? my ambitions have gone out the window now because I'm running a family, I'm playing a role now that is my role in life, I feel but in saying that, coming to the age of thirty-five I've done everything what I wanted to do I've got no regrets other than not making it as a jockey that is my only regret but we all live on dreams sometimes if they don't come of, unlucky, you go again sometime Tell me, do you have any boyfriends Suzy? Yes Tell me about them Well he lives up in Scotland and I think he's thirteen and I'm rather lonely up there because he usually goes to school but we usually play til about half past six when he comes home from school and then we go in and then he goes home to do his homework Have you got any boyfriends Suzy? What is your attitude towards marriage? to yourself? Well I don't know, I haven't given it a lot of thought 'cause I'm very, very cynical about it but then you get a certain amount of faith restored in it I've got friends and their parents are happily married and so it does put faith back into you, but me myself I'm very cynical about it When I last saw you at twenty-one you were nervous, chain-smoking and uptight and now you seem happy what's happened to you over these last seven years? Well I suppose Rupert - I'll give you some credit - Thank you! I'm not a chain-smoking person I think you can't just walk through a marriage and think once you get married it's all going to be roses and everything forever y'know you have well everybody has their rows, but we've never yet had a row that we haven't managed to sort out and I reckon, really we've got a pretty good marriage when I get married I'd like to have two children I'm not very children minded at the moment and 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 - Is it everything you wanted? - For the moment yes 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 - Mummy - Yeah? Laura wants you Very little has changed, my life is very much the same as it was then I've had another baby, we've moved house and that's about all Thomas is at a prep-school now as a day boy which he enjoys Oliver's at school and Laura's just started this week Is discipline important? Yes they must be, I wouldn't want to bring up three unruly rude children I'd hate people to look at my children and think they don't want to have them for the day because they're so badly behaved and rude but then some days you can spend your whole day just shouting at them because they're behaving so badly Would you like a nanny to look after them or would you want to look after them? No I want a nanny to look after them We didn't have a third child because we desperately wanted to have a daughter there's no point doing that but it was lovely when she was a girl because I feel the boys will go off with Rupert fishing and stuff and I shall be left on my own so it will be nice to have a girl around the place Oliver's a very volatile child it's him and I that have the problems right from the minute he was born he screamed day and night and he's never got any better he's got learning difficulties, dyslexia may come into it, we don't know yet I think he would benefit from being at a school where he can cope better As a teenager Suzy spent her holidays on her father's estate in Scotland What sort of things do you do? Ride, swim, play tennis, ping-pong and I might play croquet something like that What about the social life, what's that? - What in Perthshire? - Yes Hmm it's quite fun Well I came to London when I left school after Paris at the moment I could never live in the country, I'm happy down here the country's nice for four days, going for long healthy walks, but I could never live up there now This is a wonderful atmosphere to bring up children do you think in some way it might be too secluded and safe for them? It could be, that's something that slightly frightens me it's a very cosseted life they have here and they've got to hit the world at some point I just hope that I can help them cope with it it is the most carefree time of your life, I'm not saying for all children well I was the only child going through their parents splitting up, aged fourteen you're at a very vulnerable aged and it does cut you up but y'know, you get over it, it's not there's was no point in them staying together for me 'cause it was worse, the rows and it's worse and if two people can't live together there's no point in making yourself I hope by Rupert and I giving them a close family unit that they'll keep their heads and won't feel that they're slightly lost like I did where I wasted time was in my middle-late teens and I think at that stage I didn't care I just let those years go really, I drifted and it's too late now to look back When I leave this school I'm down for Heathfield and Fairfield 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 sixteen and went to Paris went to secretarial college and got a job What made you decide to leave school and go to Paris? I just wasn't interested in school and just wanted to get away I was partner in quite a big law firm and I resigned from that and set up my own company I tend to specialise in refurbishing old buildings and converting them into offices Well if Rupert's still got his property company in this present economic climate I'd like to get more involved with that it was a very difficult time when Rupert was deciding to leave he's got a lot of responsibilities with us and it's not easy starting up on your own Do you ever worry that the roof might fall in and you'll be out of this and whatever? Yes, I mean it crosses my mind and this last year it's crossed my mind quite hard that we could lose this if things don't pick up When she was twenty-eight Suzy's father had just died 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 the death of one of your close family is probably something you never get over and it's a different kind of problem than anything else Tell me about your mum She was diagnosed before Christmas with having lung cancer but she's strong, she's tough and hopefully she'll pull her way out of it she's just had a horrendous operation she's still in hospital now in a lot of pain when you see someone in pain like that it's especially someone that you love and care for, it's very hard somehow I think when you're faced with it you just find inner strength I think you think beforehand, something awful you can't cope with it somehow when it's there you just get on someone somehow gives you some inner strength to cope with it What do you think about making this program? I just think it's ridiculous, I don't see any point in doing it The first year or two after 28up came out I'd meet people in shops that would ask me if I was the girl from the program and that's quite hard as it's churning up all happy memories, sad memories and it all comes flooding back and parts of it I'd rather forget and it's all there for people to see and although most people are quite nice about it you get the odd one who is fairly rude and I just think they're lucky then they didn't have to have it done to them I've had a very privileged life compared to some people I've never really had to struggle to make my way but I don't think I've taken for granted what I've had either this may sound very arrogant but you can't if I let it worry me I'd worry myself to death I can't change what I was born into 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 I am interested in it myself but I wouldn't be very good at it at all So is this your missionary dream come true? Well not exactly I'm a teacher now in London and I've had the opportunity to come here for a term and it just so happens that the school I'm in has great links with this part of the world and I've come here to find out about the background of many of the boys I that teach back in London At thirty-five, Bruce is working in Sylhet a town in the North East corner of Bangladesh Well I'm earning my keep by teaching maths and helping the teachers here helping them design courses of study and I'm also teaching them English they've all got quite good English but practising and improving their English and then I've also got the chance to learn a bit of Bangla which is very difficult, I'm not doing very well at Speaks Bangla Speaks Latin Yes, speak up At seven, Bruce was at a pre-preparatory boarding school at fourteen, St.
Paul's school in London They don't enforce being upper class and things like that at St.
Paul's they suggest that you don't have long hair and do get it cut and they teach you to be reasonably well mannered but not to sniff on the poorer people At twenty-one he was in his last year at Oxford reading maths You can show that this is irreducible then you do a transformation on this point and X = T + two Good that's a nice way of doing it particularly using Eisenstein down here, his test is very powerful I won't carry on with mathematics, I don't think I'll be a teacher At twenty-eight he was teaching immigrant children in East London 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 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 it's continuance At thirty-five in Sylhet, he is teaching the older students I see education as a key to it all, I think once your population becomes educated it can think for itself a lot more and create wealth and opportunities because you've got to get the next squared, OK? when we come to the village we will definitely go swimming What do you like about Sylhet? Well I think mainly the people and their hospitality a couple of weeks ago, I went on a visit to a family with a teacher from this school they lived in a one room flat, but we were immediately invited in and we sat round having food with them and that's what hospitality means if I was back in England and I turned up at a friends an hour before lunch with three people they'd never met they'd say "well, let's go down the pub" or something I didn't agree with the Conservatives about what they were doing with the black people y'know, the racial policy Speaks Bangla everybody has the capacity to be racist wherever you are in the world I think it's a natural human condition though to be afraid of something that's slightly different to you I think that's the basis of it I know academically it's defined as prejudice plus power when you've got the power to do something about it then you can turn it into something very damaging to the person who's receiving it I think if you recognise that as an emotional condition maybe you can use your intellect to check yourself Has a country like this got any future? I think it needs an awful lot of help I think the amount of general poverty is growing you see so many children working it used to be a rich area two hundred years ago and more, people would call it the Pearl of the Bay of Bengal people wondered at it, and it's not that now that's not unconnected with the British rule here basically we don't care that many countries are incredibly poor we simply don't care we do raise money for charity and so on, which is excellent but it's just simply not good enough at the end of the day well my girlfriend is in Africa and I don't think I'll have another chance of seeing her again - Have you got any girlfriends? - No not yet, I'm sure it will come but not yet 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 in fact I don't really mean that I don't mean that I don't want to talk about it it's just that I'd need quite a long time to think about it 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 yes I haven't got married or whatever and I suppose that would've been something which I'd hoped had happened y'know I suppose there's lots of reasons really I don't suppose I've met the right person well about ten minutes, you just read out an article I'm still a bit shy and awkward still have a bit of growing up to do, I think I'm a little bit immature sometimes I can have quitesort of teenage like crushes on people and I can see myself falling into it and know exactly what's happening but unable to do anything about it I've had affairs, sometimes they've ended quite naturally with goodwill on both sides maybe I just haven't met the right person Well you're getting on a bit, are you getting worried? Well not particularly, I'm always optimistic who knows who I might meet tomorrow I think that's the trouble with reserve you're not rejected but you never know what might've been but I'm getting better, year by year I think we all grow up What are the qualities in a woman that you look for? Well somebody that I get on with I suppose, not particularly not particularly attractive or whatever I don't want this to turn into a dating agency video my heart's desire is to see my daddy, who is six thousand miles away well he died about three years ago, he was seventy-two we did drift apart because he was in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe he did come back to England and retire and I did go up to Yorkshire to see him, not as often as I should've done I'm sure he had a fond feeling for me and I'd liked to have returned that in some way Do you miss him? Well I'd liked to have been able to miss him and I'd liked to have got closer to be able to miss him I regret that chance of not getting closer at that time you always need people to care for you because if you disappoint yourself by acting badly in a particular way you tend most to hurt the people who love you and where would we be without having people to love you? At twenty-eight, Bruce was living in a council flat in East London he's now in primitive lodgings in the middle of Sylhet - Is money important to you? - Well not really, I have enough to live on I don't know whether teachers deserve more money my gripes never been about money, it's always been about conditions of work I find it horrible that people care so much about money there are many more finer things in life than that people who bought the shares and the privatisation issues just to make quick money I just thought "Well what are you about in life? Is that it?" I didn't want any part of that This film is about opportunity, do you think you've made the most of your opportunities? My opportunity was to do what I wanted and found fulfilling and I had a great variety because of my background, yes I've made the most of my opportunity because I've found something to do that I find rewarding and that was my opportunity I see education as being very important which is why I'm distressed by something which I see in Bangladesh the young kids working so hard, the need to bring the money in for their family I'd say education is a right, the more they learn the more choices they have in life life should be a rich experience If we did all love Jeffrey and we all wanted to marry him I think I know the one that he'd like best and that's her Plenty of boyfriends but not one in particular I'm friends with plenty of boys We had a teacher at school his favourite ploy was "All you girls want to do is walk out, get married, have babies and push a pram down the street with a fag hanging out of the side of your mouth Women are expanding into so many different areas now that it must be getting easier I could still be working now and have a family if I wanted to The number of people in my situation who are single not single parents as such but divorced single parents is unbelievable and the people of my mums generation it's still rare, very rare for my mum to have contemplated leaving my dad I don't know what she would've done because she never dreamed of working until the youngest one went to school but I couldn't imagine where she would've gone or what she would've done We haven't got that problem if a relationship is not working then it's acceptable in society to bail out Well I know he loves her and he loves her I don't I love him I don't think I'd get married to early I'd like to have a full life first and meet people - I'd like to enjoy myself before I - Yeah, before you commit yourself to a family Sue was twenty-four when she married Billy They had two children, William and Katherine I think that to get married young there must be things that you miss you must miss that crucial stage of being yourself because the minute you get married you're no longer a single being you're a partnership and that should be the idea behind it go on then you go first, what was that one? turn it over and put it back in the same place just after we made the last one I had Katherine and then she was about a year and the marriage started to dissolve around us really and we decided to go our separate ways I've never sat down and thought well what was it? was it this? was it that? I just knew it wasn't working and the discussion was "the best way of splitting up" rather than "why are we splitting up?" it was really strange, I think it seemed so obvious to both of us that it was probably easier to do than it should've been I have a regular one night a week when I can go out it just happens to be that in this particular circle that most of them are separated or divorced you have common problems so sometimes it's easier because you recognise each others problems with baby sitters you know that it's not always possible to drop everything and go out I think that women want more out of life now that is basically why they won't put up with a less than happy marriage Are you ready for a long term relationship? I don't think you're ever ready for a long term relationship, either happens or it doesn't I certainly wouldn't kick one in the teeth if it crept up on me yeah , I mean why not Did you meet enough men before you decided who to marry? I've been married a year and a couple of months you do think "Christ, what have I done?" - See I've still got my ideals - And I'm being honest about it and Russ thinks the same, you think at times "Christ, what have I done?" Lynne married Russ at nineteen they have two daughters, Sarah and Emma I'm very much geared to the family unit I mean, us all, we do things together all the time there are times when Russ and I obviously like to leave it all behind and go out, just the two of us now as the girls are getting older we've started taking them with us I'll say "Oh we haven't done very much" but when you look back, we have it might only just be playing games or going swimming or going for a walk we're doing it together If you think that getting married as far as we're concerned is a case of go to work, come home, cook tea for husband, go to bed, get up, go to work you're totally mistaken Jackie married Mick when she was nineteen I'm not sure I will recommend it I thinkehif, but again you're generalising I mean I would say on average nineteen is probably too young we decided between the two of us we knew it wasn't going any further we both knew I think that we would be happier leading our own lives whether that involved other people was to be seen, but you've got to bear in mind we had no children to worry about so really the only people that were getting hurt by us was us if I could I would have two girls and two boys Yeah so would I And what about you Jackie? My mum, 'cause she's got five girls she had seven years bad luck that's why she's got five girls I'd like to be able to have a happy family I know that's not possible to be happy all the time but as much of the time that was possible Go through there that's the nursery - Got any plans? - Oh do me a favour At twenty-one Jackie had moved into a new house by the time she was twenty-eight she had decided not to have children Basically I would say because I'm far to selfish I enjoy doing what I want, when I want and how I want and certainly at the moment I can't see any way around that and it's not to say that that's a forever decision and this one off, here we go oh yeah had a brief but very sweet relationship result which was Charlie cor blimey Charlie you have to clean your teeth, not eating the brush it's the best thing that could've happened to me and I would never have believed I could enjoy a child as much as I enjoy him I actually sat down and thought about should I have him? or not, I thought about what I would do if I did have him how I was going to keep him but it comes back to the same old story, the family my father's only comment to me was "it is your decision, you tell me what you want to do, then we will take it from there" and they've totally rallied round me anybody that wanted to know just got told - I was pregnant, I wasn't with the father, end of story the people that know me know the full story and that's all that matters to me and Charlie will when he gets older When I got married the primary reason was because I wanted to have a child the two, to me, went together Why did you have a child out of a marriage that wasn't working? Because I wanted to have more than one child it was the thing about being an only child myself I was always jealous of other children that had brothers and sisters when I was growing up and I didn't want to have more than one child with two different fathers I think a brother and sister should have the same mother and father, that's my ideal I would hate to think it was tough on the kids William used to say "why isn't daddy living here anymore?" and I would say to him "well you know how you and Katherine argue and get on each other's nerves?" well I said "that's how daddy and I are" "we just find that we're happier if we're not living in the same house" I'm going to work in Woolworths At twenty-one Lynne was working in a mobile library in Tower Hamlets, East London Teaching children the beauty of books and watching their faces as books unfold for them is just fantastic to work with children of that age you've got to love them, and I love children the last ten years of government have actually in my opinion brought this country much much further downhill we have lost an awful lot of our National Health Service an awful lot of our education system I'm actually on the governing body of two schools and I want the best for those kids that the system can provide and if the systems not good enough then we better the system What would you do if you had lots of money, about two pounds? I would by myself a nice new house one that's all nice and comfy Do you get depressed by money problems? No why? why should you? - If you can manage on what you've got - I refuse to get depressed over money - I do - It's easy to, but why should you I reach the eighteenth day of the month and my mortgage is due on the twentieth and there's nowhere near enough money in there, I get depressed about it, obviously What money? It was hard first of all when I gave up work from having a fairly high salary to nothing was hard but you get used to it, whatever your circumstances are you live in them, you get used to them and you cope, everybody does Sue now works part time for a building society every thing's changed for me 'cause I'm now supporting myself a lot more than I was a year ago How did you feel about living off Social Security? I hated it really hated it yeah perhaps it's old fashioned values, my mum and dad have never been in that situation then my mum and dad have never been single parents either so you have to do what's best for you and the children I took a year off when I had Charlie and the State kept me for that year but I went back to work although to be honest by the time I pay everything up I'm not that better off but I feel better you take it from there, can I get through this week or this month? can I get Charlie the things he needs but somewhere along the line you get the money for whatever you need and at the moment we're working and trying to keep our families as best we can Why is it you three haven't changed so much do you think? Perhaps we've all grown up We've all had a stable background with stable relationships all the way through the same people are here now that were there then She initially went into hospital for an exploratory operation and she found out she had cancer well at that stage we didn't really know how bad it was she was ill at the time they started chemotherapy and radiation treatment and she was just so bad mum badly wanted to come back to the family and the family needed her here she then spent nine months of hell that I wouldn't have wished on anybody she sat down on the settee and she died just like that and we were up in Norfolk with my in-laws at the time and so all we got was a phone call from dad to say that mum had died And how did you deal with it? I'm still dealing with it now but then although she's not with us in body she's still with us in spirit she was a great friend to me as well as a mum probably the best friend I'll ever have and as you see it still makes me very emotional now it's only two years to some it probably seems "oh it's a long time" but it's not very long the poor, if you don't help them they will die soon won't they Some people are just born into rich families and they're lucky I don't see why they should have the luck when people worked all their lives and haven't got half as much as what they have it just doesn't seem fair Well we only had a limited choice anyway, truth be told we didn't have a choice of private education, because they couldn't have afforded it anyway, so we just went to the school that we wanted to go to and made the best of it that is something that when it comes to our children we would say to them "why not go further" All I am interested in and probably the same as the other two is what is good for me, what is good for my son and that's it I don't sit there envying maybe what Suzy could do for her children that I can't do for mine yes I'd love the money to be able to put him all around the world I'd love to be able to do that but I haven't got it and at the end of the day I'm going to do what I can at this precise moment in time it's probably one of the best times of my life I think probably because I've got Charlie he's totally transformed my life a lot of times I pull my hair out but certainly for the better so yes I'm a lot happier within myself people around me have noticed that, no it's a good time for me I don't want Charlie to be an only, I'd love him to have brothers and sisters but not necessarily loads of them, just one would do actually! I think Charlie would like that as well I think Charlie would love it A year ago Lynne started having blackouts she took medical advice they stuck all these tubes up inside me and discovered that I've got these veins up here, that shouldn't be there - In your brain? - Yes - And what can they do about it? - Not a lot at the moment they're investigating other treatments, but the surgeon said that he doesn't want to operate at the moment as it's too near the optic nerve and there's an eighty percent chance of hitting the optic nerve So is it frightening to know you have this condition? It was for about a week but it got itself into its own place within my system where amongst my rungs of priorities and I overcame the fear of it and now it doesn't worry me at all We've all got little secret dreams I loved drama at school, I loved to sing along with millions of others, so I would've liked to taken that further it was discussed at one stage, going to drama school and pursuing it but I really at the time didn't have the guts didn't want to give up work and income as a young person I was quite enjoying myself I didn't want to risk all that to follow the dream - Were these good times too? - Not particularly, no I've got two lovely children now but it's like another crossroads for me now I don't know which way to go or what's going to happen I'm on my own basically, I'm starting again - Are you changing? - I'm just growing up I don't think you ever stop growing up but the circumstances are changing so I'm just adapting 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 Yorkshire Dales I said I was interested in physics and chemistry, well I'm not going to do that here at fourteen he was going to a Yorkshire boarding school at twenty-one was reading physics at Oxford So what career are you going to pursue? It depends whether I'll be good enough to do what I want to really do I would like if I can to do research the gas in these experiments is a temperature comparable with the sun whereas in a power reactor it'll be maybe ten times the temperature of the sun At twenty-eight he had moved to America and was doing nuclear research at the University of Wisconsin How's it going Rich? tell me about the current drive OK well you're all looking at this thing expectantly so maybe I better say something about it the first one is basically saying that the rate of change of crystal momentum, it's DDT this quantity H-bar K that is equal to the Lorentz force He is now an associate professor at the university - Is Madison a friendly place? - Yeah very friendly It's a fairly small little community and you get Deer and things running through here so it's kind of nice you notice if you walk into a shop here, or a store as they would call it people are much more polite to you than they are in England and it's not just a matter of being obsequious they just try and be reasonably friendly and smile at you 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 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 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 seventeen 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 She felt that she wasn't portrayed at all like she is and that she felt foolish as a result of it all she was really taken by surprise by how she came over and she really wasn't sure why she came over that way but she was very unhappy with everyone involved and so she just didn't want to be in that position again - 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 and not We've only been married four years, anything could happen we could easily drift apart, there are so many pressures on people People saw the last film and thought this marriage isn't going to work or last, did you get that response? Well it's actually such a mystery to me what they thought they were talking about that I really just don't relate to it at all, I don't know why they said that the sorts of things you were seeing was us trying to be very honest about it and that may have been the place in 28 where we probably were working hardest to describe what things were like instead of I was just saying I need sometimes just a very dull and neutral and don't show too much of myself well in that I think we were just trying to be really upfront and say this is what it's like and we're working very hard at it and hopefully it will work out if that sounds to somebody like it's in jeopardy, well that's their problem the big issue for us at the moment is how are we going to manage to have kids and run two careers But in those early formative years would you be happy for your children to be brought up by Jackie and Jackie not being able to give them full attention Well that's putting it in a strange way He's bringing them up too, it's not just me this is an area that I pay lip service to the idea of equal shares on this as well it remains to be seen if I live up to my intentions There are several things I think to be said here that 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 Nick and Jackie now have a one year old son, Adam On the subject of Adam I enjoy doing this for the most part but I don't want the sins of the father to be visited on the son in this case so we've sort of decided that we want to keep him out of this to some extent well, to some extent? essentially altogether 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! this is one that we were quite proud of, Glodis Charges between a couple of metal plates where there's an ionised gas in between I suppose I am very ambitious in trying to get my research to go forward I'm also trying to train students so that they can actually acquire some useful skills and can go out and be really useful contributors themselves and push back the frontiers of what we're capable of doing 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 when you did the first program but that's the only time I've been in my position I don't feel that I'm letting England down because I don't think that England wanted me there doing what I was doing so how can I feel that I'm betraying a country when it doesn't want me to do to do what it's trained me to do Do you get lonely here? You just tend to get stuck into your everyday routine and 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 ten times and that's awful when you think in those terms you realise you really are an exile - Do you miss England? - An awful lot yeah my parents managed to get over here a couple of times in the last two years and Andrew my middle brother was here about two years ago, so that's pretty good going that they got over here Christopher is the brother who is deaf and his language skills are getting better, but he certainly didn't get a flying start from the educational system he went through he really is still, getting to the point where he can't hear at all so you can't have a conversation with him on the phone he'll get on the phone and tell you stuff and you can understand most of it so that's really nice Is it painful for you? Well the thing that was emotional to think back on was the situation when he was a year old and it was really becoming clear to everybody that despite the fact that his doctor had originally insisted, no he wasn't deaf but it became pretty clear that he was and at the time I was desperately hoping it wasn't true that somehow some sort of miracle would happen and he would turn out not to be but then I told myself, well if he weren't then he wouldn't be the same person and it would be wishing that the person didn't exist so that wasn't the appropriate way to think about it Do you think you can build a life here? Well y'know one is trying to but it is very difficult being in a place where you're a long way away from all your background and you don't have any sort of support network, it really does mean you have to fend for yourself, you keep thinking you're really being called on to show pioneer spirit every now and again it seems I don't have this urge that you sometimes hear people saying of "I want my child to have all the things I didn't" and I don't look back and think I was deprived there were things that I had in a certain sense as a child which were not material things that I had but situations I was in and experiences that most children wouldn't have growing up on a farm and actually working on a farm being in the situation of being told "clean out that calf shed" really has made me very determined to get things done and not give up half way through something I think it develops a streak of stubbornness that can be useful now the trouble with me is I tend to take the streak of stubbornness too far and I have to try and mellow out a bit Have we travelled a long way since that seven year old in his big muddy boots? I suppose an awful long way yes I'm sure there's a lot of the same personality that was in there is still here still easily embarrassed and confused I think that you can see that the saying about "give me the boy until he is seven" I'm quite prepared to accept that there's a lot in that if you could look at me at seven and see through the superficial and silly things I was saying or if you could see what made the child tick there's probably an awful lot in there that's here now, yeah I read the Financial Times I read the Observer and The Times What do you like about it John? Well I usually look at the headlines and read about them about it What's the point of the program? part of the program is to reach a comparison and I don't think it is - Good point - Because we're not typical examples and I think that's what people seeing the program might think falsely I mean they tend to typecast us So everything we say, they'll think "oh that's a typical result of a public school system" It's certainly true that more people know they have more options or imagine they have I think it practical terms the difference in numerical number of options isn't that great but the mere knowledge creates an option in itself so I think we do have more options and it is undesirable but it's very difficult to correct I don't think it is undesirable at all I think what's undesirable is people who have had options don't take best advantage of them when I leave this school I'm going to Collet Court and then I would be going to Westminster Boarding School if I pass the exam and then we think I'm going to Cambridge and Trinity Hall John went to Westminster and read Law at Christchurch Oxford I do believe parents have a right to educate their children as they think fit and I think someone who works on an assembly line on some of these car factories, earning a huge wage could well afford to send their children to private school if they wanted to At twenty-one we asked him what career he would pursue Might be in the courts Doing what? Perhaps Chancery practise I now have a career, I'm a Barrister other than that life chugs along in varying degrees John entered the Chancery division of the high court and specialises in company law When I leave school I'm going to the Dragons School, I might and after I might go to Charthouse Marlborough I can't remember all the other places as mummy's got so many but those are some of them What about university Charles? I might go to Oxford Charles went to Marlborough but he didn't go to Oxford instead he went to Durham university I'd say I'm pleased I didn't, because it was very much a sort of sort of Marlborough prep school Marlborough, Oxbridge conveyor belt shoved out at the end and what did Charles want to do? it's hard to say probably scribbling away in some basement for some London newspaper or something Charles did scribble away for an East London newspaper and then moved on to the BBC where he is now a producer he married last year he prefers not to be on television I'm going to Charterhouse and after that, Trinity Hall, Cambridge Andrew went to Charterhouse and Cambridge, where he read law I'd like to be a solicitor and also fairly successful at twenty-eight Andrew was a solicitor in a large London firm What qualities do you think it needs to be successful? Well you have to have a legal ability in my business, obviously and you have to have a bed-side manner as far as your clients are concerned there's no good being brilliant if you can't communicate with your clients at thirty-five he had become a partner in the same company well I work in the corporate department of a large firm of solicitors in the city that is dealing with things like mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, general corporate advice putting deals together for clients What do you think about girlfriends at your age? I've got one but I don't think much of her I don't think I financially come from the same background Andrew didn't go for a classy debutante, he went for a good Yorkshire lass but obviously he knew what he wanted at twenty-eight, Andrew had married Jane well I suppose the most important thing that's happened is having two children one five years ago, Alexander, and then a couple of years later, Timothy we've also moved out from central London over to Wimbledon we decided we should look for somewhere with a bit of green space so we moved out here What was the biggest surprise about having children? that our ideas of bringing them up don't always coincide with each other when I see the children playing together now I realise how much fun they have together and it's probably what I missed being an only child When boys go around with girls they don't pay attention to what they're doing for instance my grandmother had an accident, because a boyfriend was kissing his girlfriend in the street Well the most important thing is that I've got married He married Claire, the daughter of a former ambassador to Bulgaria recently I think this charity Friends of Bulgaria it's something that's very important in my life I became involved in all this to channel aid to Bulgaria it is a great pleasure to welcome you all here tonight on behalf of Friends of Bulgaria my mother is from Bulgaria and that explains why for me Bulgaria is an especially important place we decided for our inaugural event it would be a good idea to have a concert and as I'm a barrister I'd hoped I'd be able to get access to one of the halls of court because they're very magnificent buildings It is coincidental that we met but it's obvious that the Balkan connection was a strong mutual interest I think it's not a bad idea to pay for schools because if we didn't schools would be so nasty and crowded - Yes - So do I think so - and the people in the schools wouldn't - and the poor people would come rushing in and the man in charge of the school would get very angry he would get bankrupt he wouldn't be able to pay all the teachers if he didn't get any money At seven the boys are singing Waltzing Matilda in Latin at their exclusive private school in London An education is very important and you can never be sure of leaving your children any worldly goods but at least you can be sure that once you've given them a good education that's something that no one can take away the important issue is drawing the distinction between allowing people to spend the money they earn in other words, low taxes and also putting enough money into the infrastructure like education, health service, transport system and that's a very difficult balance to draw and I'm not sure we're doing the right thing at the moment I think more should be being put into that and I think people would be prepared to pay higher taxes to pay for that sort of thing All this talk about opportunities it's something I did slightly object to in the program we were shown at the age of seven outlining the academic career that most of us did in fact pursue but didn't show the sleepless nights, the pouring over our books all the sweat and toil that got us through to university but it was presented as if it was part of some indestructible birth right that we went to all these places and I thought that was unfair they didn't show us having to do beastly jobs on the holidays if I had a son I would like to send him to Westminster where I went where I suspect the major public schools win over the state schools is in the quality of the staff that they attract certainly at my school the teachers were absolutely first rate but on the other hand we had very little in the way of facilities and computers and language laboratories which are taken for granted in many state schools and I think when people talk about more resources they often mean more money being spent on these things which in a sense are inessential and less money is being spent on what really matters which is the quality of the teachers The rich children always make fun of poor children The acquisition of lots and lots of money is not something I set much importance by I'm not money minded in that sense on the other hand it would be hypocritical to pretend that a lot of the things I take for granted and my lifestyle is dependent on having a fair amount of money but I can't say the acquisition of more money is one of my main aims in life we now have a house in the country which takes up a lot of our time and energies and I seem to spend a lot of time gardening furiously trying to tame the wilderness that we inherited there I'd have laughed if ten years ago you'd have told me that I'd spend most of my time digging herbaceous borders and things but that's what I seem to do and I enjoy it one good thing about having a large house in the country now is that I've taken up playing the piano as I always had a piano in London but with work I never had time to practise and now we've got room to house a piano in the country and find I am now practising quite a lot and beginning to get it back a bit Certainly I can never tell the difference between you playing and the CD playing - When I'm out of the room, he's very good - She's very diplomatic No no it's true Does money concern you a lot? No I think as long as one has enough to be comfortable that's really what one should aim for we took Alexander skiing for the first time last year and he really enjoyed it Is the family unit the most important thing in your lives? more than your own ambition or? I'm not sure I have any ambition as such now just to progress with my work and so on I think ambition probably changes once you've got children you're outlook on life is no longer the same as it was before and you can still have ambitions and be successful in your work but the end result is that if you're successful in your work then you can enjoy your success with your children and hopefully with your wife as well! I think the more you've had out of the country the more privileges you're born with, the greater your duty is I still feel as I did when I was twenty-one that it's important for people who have had advantages to try and put as much back and help others less fortunate than themselves if they can In England there's a perpetual debate about the National Health Service being starved of resources but people who talk about the government butchering the National Health Service I think should come over to Bulgaria to see what being kept short of necessary supplies and funds really does mean what we're doing is, going round and delivering drugs that we've managed to buy with money raised by our appeal and also at the same time trying to find out what it is they really need so we can be sure we're getting the right things to the right destinations we've been told in some places it's impossible to do operations albeit they have the operating theatres and excellent doctors for want of simple anaesthetics in other places for instance, the children's home at Vigari? they're even lacking such simple things as soap and detergent these are things that we can supply in England very painlessly and yet here they really make a lot of difference The Bulgaria that I have known coming back with John has been a much more varied country and it has been very enriching to travel around the country with John and to have the extra dimension of John having investigated his family tree down through many generations and many centuries second along there, my great great grandfather who was the first prime minister of Bulgaria when the country was liberated from the Turks in 1879 speaks Bulgarian Well I think everyone needs to have a feeling that they belong somewhere that there's a plot of land or somewhere where they hail from and their roots are within the last month a new agricultural law has been passed returning land to its former proprietors we think that some part of this property will come back to us and I am very excited at that prospect it belonged to my grandfather, his brother and they farmed the whole estate in partnership with my great grandfather looking at it with a professional eye, I've dealt with worse than this in England I don't think there's anything that couldn't be sorted out in six months or so and a couple of house guests to stay Do you think you and Claire could live here? Ask me that in seven years' time - I don't think much of the accents - Neither do I What's been the effect of being in these films on you? I don't think there has been any effect really from time to time I meet someone who I've never met before who says "I think I've seen you somewhere before haven't I?" and I say "well, perhaps" I try not to talk about it Straw McAnessy got three minuses in a day, he's a pest I must say, I mainly laugh when I see myself at seven obviously, I said some shocking but extremely funny things in retrospect it has to be said that I bitterly regret that the headmaster of the school where I was when I was seven, pushed me forward for this series because every seven years a little pill of poison is injected into Oh no! Well that's just the truth I dislike intensely being on television and I refused to do this program the last time round and I'm only doing it this time because I see this as an opportunity to draw the attention of the viewers in this country to the awful problems in Bulgaria and in the hope that they may wish to do something to help the situation there I don't like the big boys hitting us and the prefects sending us out for nothing I know I prefer to be alone really I find it hard to express emotion most of the time although I'm getting on top of that I'm more than happy now just the simple things to say to Susan, y'know "I love you" or something like that I mean I can tell you about it but I really haven't been able to say it freely to Sue, y'know? What was it that you fell in love with, what is it about him? His helplessness I suppose, brings out the mothering instinct in me can pick him up and cuddle him and he's also very good looking I think but he doesn't agree with me and in the summer he's got this cute little bum in shorts 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" but that's it, after all these years, we've been married what? thirteen years now? and he still says "you're leaving me" well one day I might just pack my bags and go! At seven, Paul was at a children's home in London were you happy at the children's home in England? We didn't mind that really, 'cause we didn't know what was going on 'cause we were a bit young well my mother and father separated originally I think they eventually got divorced I went to the boarding school for one year, then we emigrated to Australia my father got remarried and how did you get on with your step-mum? pretty well but like I said before I'm just not close, I'm not really close to my father either Do you have any regrets that you weren't closer to him when you were younger? Yeah I suppose that's all wasted time in a way, but he was always there, I could always talk to him but it was different A lot of English people that go out to Australia grow up without family and suddenly Paul's here and he's got all this family that he half knew existed Now the first one, the red brick one So Paul brought Sue and his two children Katie and Robert to visit the family for the first time Do you think about England much when you're in Australia? Only when the cricket's on! I'm in awe of everything I see 'cause I've always wanted to come to London I've always thought it would be a great thing to do and all of a sudden I'm here and I'm having a great time and I'm just dragging Paul and the kids along behind like an Auntie "Come on! we're off!" but no, it'll be really interesting because I've always had lots of family and I love this sort of stuff y'know, I'm a bit of a show pony When the crunch came and we were coming over here I didn't want to do it it's just something in me that holds me back it's shyness or something, I'm not sure I'm not really good at meeting new people I guess Is there any way you would want to be a father any differently from the way your father was to you? I'd like to be more contact close actual physical contact close 'cause my dad and I are exactly the same like that, we if we hug it's unusual When we had Katie when she was born Paul said to me "Oh I'm glad I've got a daughter" he said "When I'm an old man at least she'll come up and give me a kiss and a cuddle" Would you like to married Paul? tell me why not I don't like them 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 and say she says "you have to eat what you get given" so I don't like greens, say she gives me greens? then that's it! Divorce was something new to me I figured what Paul's been through Paul doesn't say it's very bad but I wouldn't like that for my children What keeps this marriage together? When to keep your mouth closed at times - I don't know - Tolerance I think we have arguments, big arguments like anyone else but we have spoken about this before we don't tend to stew over it for any length of time we can be unbelievable together, like biting each others heads off but we don'twe'd never go on to the next day This is one thing that the show has done to us is that it makes you analyse things a bit more maybe if the show hadn't been here we may have split up because you think well, we can see what we were like a long time ago and it brings it back to you, you think well we have this thing often a lot of people grow apart and they can't see what they had originally I don't think the show could actually hold you together No no but what it's showing you is what you had in the past yeah In their twenties Paul and Sue sold up, bought an old van and travelled Australia I think it brought us closer together because we really got to know each other and relied on each other so much it gave us our own peace of mind that we could settle down and now have a family that we had done something we hadn't just been nobodies and lived in suburbia all our lives we'd done something that we were proud of that we'd accomplished on our own being together so much, it was hard but then we settled down and we must've settled down really well 'cause I got pregnant and everything so something must've been going right The family settled down in a working class suburb of Melbourne are you ambitious for your children Paul? I said something about wanting Robert to be a brain surgeon that was a joke! if he's a brain surgeon good and well but it would be nice to let them go one step up from us I think at the moment I'm pretty happy with Katie and I'm not having a go at Rob but I've got fears for Robert 'cause he's struggling a little bit he's only been at school for two years and prep since grade one and he's had three teachers already lets say they don't know how to motivate him what does university mean? When the last show was on I said to Robert "Do you think you'll go to university?" he said "What's a university?" it just floored me it just proves that high education wasn't even a major point to us just getting him out of first grade was a major importance to us so university seems a long way of so we just take each year as it comes I was going to be a policeman but I thought how hard it would be to join in I just haven't made up my mind yet I was going to be a physical education teacher but one of the teachers told me that you had to get up into university At twenty-one Paul was working as a junior partner for a firm of bricklayers in Melbourne by twenty-eight he had gone out on his own as a subcontractor but it didn't work out since then he's had a variety of jobs in the building trade Well I'm more of a trades person than a business person I've never had any business training and if I've got natural ability I've probably haven't used it where did the confidence go? did I lose it because of it? or did I never have it? I think the confidence was never there, it might run in the family I think that maybe it's the lack of security he felt as a child perhaps? that's my theory and my theory alone that's the whole thing isn't it when one of your parents are taken away from you, you lack security and the monitors up in the wash room sends the nurse out well there's no talking, no I wasn't talking Katie now has this thing "Oh y'know me, I'm hopeless" and it's just poor "Oh y'know me, I can't do this" and it's sort of like this defeatist attitude type of thing, but oh I don't know, I just ignore it and go along my merry way I suppose he has got better I think as you get older, maturer, confidence does come to a point I really went through a stage and this might seem stupid as it's only bricklaying, like I had failed but something happened in that job and I started to look at what we had and think "what do you want out of life?" "what's so bad about what we've got?" Do the two of you have a dream now? I always wanted to move to the country and I wouldn't mind a small property, it doesn't have to be big or flash small relaxed style living an attractive sort of lifestyle We've just been together for so long we just plod along together, yeah I enjoy his company and he enjoys mine most of the time I know that he's going to come home to me every night I'm going to have someone there he's very secure that way she does put up with a lot, I can't be that easy to live with I'm nice but I'm not that easy to live with Well we pretend we've got swords and we make the noises of the swords fighting and when somebody stabs us we go "ARRGHHH!!" I think if you're healthy and have good friends you can get on perfectly well everybody would like to be rich I came to London and I contacted an agency for squatters and they were able to give me the address of somebody who was able to help people who were looking for accommodation in the London area Do you kick against the stability that's I don't think I ever had any stability to be quite honest I can't think of any time in my life when I ever did I don't think I've been kicking against anything I think I've been kicking in mid-air the whole of my life I'd been moving about a bit between different places, really a bit unsettled but I'm very shortly moving to live in a room At twenty-eight, Neil was roaming around Britain we found him on the West coast of Scotland if the state didn't give us any money, it would probably just mean crime and I'm glad I don't have to steal to keep myself alive if the money runs out then for a few days there's nowhere to go to and that's all you can do, I simply have to find the warmest shed I can find At thirty-five he's living in a council flat in the Shetland Islands the nice thing about here is that you can cut yourself off when you want because there are people living around but they're pretty quiet people it's an environment which sustains me, it's one in which I can survive I still feel my real place is in the world of the world where people are doing what the majority of people do and the reason I don't feel safe is because I think I'm getting more and more used to this lifestyle which eventually I shall have to give up How do you manage for money these days? social security, still, I wish it wasn't but I'm afraid it is I've no desire to be putting the taxes up and drawing money off people who have earned it themselves but that's the way it is well I'm going to take people to the country and sometimes the seaside and I'll have a big loudspeaker in the motor coach and tell them whereabouts we are and what we're going to do and what the name of the road is and all about that Neil was brought up in a Liverpool suburb went to a local comprehensive school and Aberdeen university he dropped out after a term and at twenty-one was working on a building site in London at twenty-eight he was homeless How do people regard you here? Well I'm still known as an eccentric as I have been since about the age of sixteen or so Do the days seem long for you? They can do Do you have any friends anywhere? I've some good friends still in England Neil settled down in the Shetland Islands a couple of years ago - Hello Neil, how are you? - Yeah Is this community important to you? Yes, it has to be, this is where I live it's been very good to me people have been especially kind in many areas and I'd like to be putting something back into it and we'd be putting something back into the whole of Shetland, not just this area I'll take two pints of milk please There we are Neil, and how's the pantomime then? - Not bad thanks - Oh that's good, no traumas? not on my part but there's a few people could do with learning their lines a bit better - But you're alright? - Well I shouldn't speak so soon when I grow up I want to be an astronaut but if I can't be an astronaut I think I'll be a coach driver this is probably linked up with the fact I want to travel my thoughts haven't really changed, I definitely would like to be a coach driver now I suppose I yes well 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 but I suppose I'd probably find that just as tedious as all the other jobs I've done all the things I always thought I could do I could give lectures on erudite subjects that I'd read all about or I could work in the theatre perhaps lighting or directing a show and is all that lost to you? It does seem to be, yeah The village pantomime 1990, Beauty and the Beast Matthew Matthew Your house sir is needing maybe some repairs I think the attendance at last years pantomime on the Saturday night was the biggest crowd of West of Shetland folk I'd ever seen in one place and we're pleased with that and we think they enjoyed it we've had good receptions in other parts of Shetland as well we did tour one play I think we're moving into an age when there's going to be more stress on the community but when bigger policies are fairly set are fairly predictable and the emphasis is going to fall on local organisations You directed it last year and you're not this year, why is that? Well the specific reason is that we had a preliminary meeting and my name was not put forward as the one they wanted So why would that be? Probably because I like to do things in my own way I'm perhaps quite an authoritative director I have my own idea of the performance before we even start and I don't like people to deviate from that during the course of the production people come along with suggestions I accept suggestions, I don't just go along without listening to people I know how I want the thing and once I deviate once from that idea the whole thing falls apart, it's not a work of art any more I'm not claiming that I produce marvellous works of art but I do know what I'm aiming for Alas, poor master still sleeping shall I awaken him? I think everybody wants to be somebody and when you can't be anything in your ordinary life if you feel there's somewhere you can excel, then it's great I know how much pleasure people who take photographs get when their work is praised and that's perhaps as much as the same thing I'm just having a quick look at your plan here What I have done is taken lists of all the halls in Shetland and their capacity Neil is trying to organise a professional touring theatre company if a hall only seats sixty people it may not be worth putting on a show there What would your response say to the fact that only four folk turned up to Sumburgh I was disappointed but I think it proved the point I'm trying to make you can't just expect people to turn up for a group from outside Shetland when they don't know what the thing's about I've had an instinctive feeling that I was a writer since I was sixteen I never really wanted to be anything else I would actually pay to have something published, 'cause I think that's important if I could find somebody who could recognise something there must be something in what I've done I don't think it's all useless, I probably am over valuing but I know how much effort went into some of this and on that strength alone I just can't believe it's useless with each successive play I don't know who I'm trying to speak to and what I'm trying to say to them whether they're listening, I just keep going because that's what I feel I should be doing in the winter if you live in the country it would just all be wet and there wouldn't be anything for miles around and you get soaked if you try to go out and there's no shelter anywhere except in your own house but in the town you can go out on wet wintery days 'cause you can always find somewhere to shelter 'cause there's lots of places I don't think I've been typical of the environment in which I live what my background has given me is a sense of just being part of a very impersonal society you finish the week, you come home, you plug into the tv set for the weekend and then you manage to get back to work on Monday and it seems to me that this is just a slow path to total brain washing and if you have a brainwashed society then you're heading towards doomed - Well it weren't too bad last night anyway - It's better than it's been for a while There was an enormous reaction to you in the previous film what did people see in you do you think? It seemed that I was representing some kind of successful escapism or somebody who had managed to be totally himself hadn't given in to pressure of society to conform and people flooded me with letters and people seemed to think I could solve their personal problems and I was quite frightened because I knew I couldn't but what really bothered me was people seemed to see something in me that I hadn't been aware of myself all I was aware of was I didn't have anywhere to go, I had nothing to do, I had no money I felt let down by quite a lot of people I didn't think my life was a success but suddenly everybody seemed to think so but the most nagging thing was that even if a million people had written to me it wouldn't have made any difference to my own situation when I get married I don't want to have any children because they are always doing naughty things and making the whole house untidy I always told myself that I would never have children Why? Because, because well because children inherit something from their parents and even if my wife were the most high spirited and ordinary and normal of people the child would still stand a very fair chance of being not totally full of happiness because what he or she will have inherited from me Have you given up on women? well, what, how shall we say it? all but, y'know every unmarried man and I suppose every unmarried woman hopes for someone to come along and change their lives but the practical reality is the chances of my finding somebody who would put up with me in my integrity there are few What would you look for in a woman? Well I might look for various things but what's more important is what would someone look for in me? I can't offer reliability I think most women looking for a husband or a steady man want somebody who is reliable in some way or other and I cannot offer that as I don't know what I'll be like from one day to the other and it would be foolish of me pretending that I can offer that I can offer sincerity, I can offer compassion willingness to do my part, to put my wives interest as high as my own I'm sure these are important but I cannot say, look in ten years' time I'll still be bringing a wage in especially if I don't start in that situation Do you worry about your sanity? other people sometimes worry about it Like who? as I said I sometimes can behave in an erratic fashion I sometimes get very frustrated and very angry for a reason which won't be apparent to other people around me it happens from time to time Are you getting better or worse? I don't think there's any significant change I haven't been so depressed since I've been in Shetland my basic personality is not a lot different Are you having any medical treatment for your mood changes? No I haven't for many years because I wouldn't like to be dependant upon man made substances for a cure Do you ever think you're going mad? Oh I don't think it I know it well kaboom we're not allowed to use the word mad I think most people are mad here really but then I think it's a mad world I remember working in London twelve years ago and just walking through the city and they were digging up the drains and there were cranes knocking down buildings and there were cars trying to get down impossible narrow alleys and having to reverse out again and policemen doing all kinds of things and I thought this world is just mad, this world is just mad - Yes I'd say I believed in god - Are you religious? Well I go to church with my parents on Sundays well I don't know now even if I believe in god or not I've thought an awful lot about it actually and I still don't know but still this was absolutely certain if one was to survive in the world, one had to believe in god And how's 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 how I've seen him in my life sometimes very benevolent, sometimes seemingly needlessly unkind well after I'd tried every remedy one could think of for my personality disorders I thought well I'm going to trust god because other people have done so seemingly with positive results I can't say the moment I trusted god my life was fine and I can't say all the time that I think I've found the answer but I can say with some certainty that once I started believing that there is actually a god who has something of a design for the world who is working in a certain way in the world after that, some things became clearer to me I really can't say much more than that Coloured people, we don't like them very much no it sounds a bit ghostly, coloured people if you think of a purple person with red eyes and yellow feet you can't really think of what they really look like I find it hard to believe I was ever like that but there's the evidence probably when I was seven, i just lived in a wonderful world where everything was sensation dumb I could be happy like this I could be miserable the next day I don't have a yearning for any past time in my life perhaps in my subconscious I'd recall a time when everything was a lot happier my teens were terribly unhappy years If we come back in seven years how would you like us to find you? In a job from which I was getting satisfaction married probably with children with a good salary enough to, as I said before, to be able to live fairly comfortably and with friends whom I could contact when I wanted to So do you think you have failed? Can't really judge Do you feel you've failed yourself? Well my life isn't over Can you think what you'd like to be doing in the year 2000? I can think of all kinds of things I'd like to be doing the real question is what am I likely to be doing? What are you likely to be doing? That's a horrible question I tend to think most likely I'll be wandering homeless around the streets of London but with a bit of luck that won't happen I always feel that a good fairy has waved a wand over me and saved me from that because that seemed very much what the end would be for a while that's perhaps why I cling on here I know how tempting it is to escape into fantasies to believe that I already am a successful writer to believe that I've got lots of friends to believe that if I had done such and such my life would've been different but the most difficult thing is to accept the reality to be what we are in this situation we are in, that's terribly difficult who lost their trousers? No not intentionally the last year my moustache fell off my beard At the end of their very special day in London after their trip to the zoo and the party we took our children to an adventure playground where they could do just what they liked those from the children's home set about building a house there's Nicholas and Tony Andrew Get out of it! and Bruce John Suzy Jackie and her friends give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man this has been a glimpse of Britain's future