63 UP (7 Up series)

[Leyani]

Does anyone know when this will be aired? Last year it said expected first week of May but can’t find it. Paranoid I’ll miss it, I love that series

And does anyone know what happened to Child of Our Time and Born to be special (not sure that was the name)? Are they still going?

Thanks!

Miljah, yes the children they chose were very polarised (with the possible exception of Neil, his friend and Nick), weren't they? The middle class had well and truly emerged in late Victorian England though, so why the shortsightedness? I suspect it didn't suit the political message that Michael Apted was potentially (and initially) trying to make?

Newmodel I agree about John. I couldn't believe his comment about factory workers' "huge wages" but he was young. It sounded as though he wasn't anymore aware though when he got older.

Lark I don’t think anyone here has said John’s views are typical. I found his views surprising because he is a barrister.

I think John lacks insight. I was most narked by his insistence that he didn’t actually have a privileged upbringing, because his mother had to work to keep him at his posh school after his father died, & then he had a scholarship to Oxford.

Neil failed the entrance exam, presumably, because unlike John (& the History Boys ) he wouldn’t have been coached at his school.

Neil was not privileged. John most definitely was!

Entry to Oxbridge has never just been down to an entrance exam though. By far the most important part of the process would then, as now, have been the interview. I think Neil's lack of robustness, for want of a better word, would have been exposed by this. No amount of coaching prepares you if you aren't wha they are looking for.

In those days you had to get through the entrance exam to get an interview. At many schools you did a seventh term in the 6th form to prepare for it.

mustbetime yes, this is what happened at my Grammar school. An extra year for Oxbridge preparation. We got a half day off for everyone who got a place.

But we don't know that Neil failed the entrance exam, he might not have done.

It wasn't a fee paying school, though, so it is possible Neil's school did this too.

I think Tony the taxi driver lives near me (near my favourite Epping Forest pub - it looked like the bar of said pub when we saw him briefly with the granddaughter he and his wife had brought up). I am going to look out for him jogging in the forest (though suspect he doesn't do it as much as he'd like us to think). My area is full of black cab drivers who have moved out - they know a good suburb when they see one. I also thought Michael Apted might have asked Tony about Brexit as the cabbies were almost all Brexit voters.

But we don’t know that Neil failed the entrance exam

It wasn’t in the programme but it was in the Guardian article about him

When we saw the programme this week we saw a photo of Neil in a cloak and mortarboard, clearly graduating. The article just linked to confirmed it was from the OU and apparently a few years ago which I don't remember being mentioned in any of the series. All we ever hear is that Neil left Aberdeen university after the first term. So this was good to know he had achieved some tangible reward academically as he is obviously has the brains. Go Neil!

It is good to know

An OU course will have been ideal for him. This Liverpool Echo piece discusses how being at Aberdeen made him seriously depressed & he just couldn’t face being at university again. Doing it in his own time & space will have been so much nicer.

Even though Neil seems to consider his own life a failure, he has achieved many things despite his long-term mental health issues - he has managed to become a politician, has bought a house, completed a degree, been married. There are many with MH problems who will have managed none of these, let alone all of them. I agree with whoever said upthread that maybe he was brought up in an environment where academic success was applauded to the extent that when he seemingly failed (not getting into Oxbridge) his world tumbled down around him - he just didn't have the emotional resilience to withstand failure.

I do think that Neil suffered some trauma. There was a marked difference between 14 and 21. Something happened.

John, the barrister, has said before now though that the programme is frustrating because they pick out bits and sentences so I think he just meant compared to the 1960s we have less equality which is true in terms of rigid class structures.

@mrsjoyfulprizeforraffiawork he did ask Tony about Brexit

Tony said he voted leave but would vote differently now, or words to that effect.

Yeah he said he'd vote green now. He's done really well to pull himself back round from the disaster in Spain and also they've raised a grandchild due to their daughter having difficulties. Fair play really.

I just watched episode 2.
The teacher who went from state to private school sector typically for teaching is retierd - so many of them seem not to work at 63. That definitely is changing. My father worked full time to 77 and I expect to work until I die so that is one big change - that they can afford to work say 2 days a week and just do hobbies on the other days. He seems happy - struggling with his weight which is not uncommon at age 63, I wanted to know if his sons went to a private school like the one he taught in or not - their mother is head of sixth form somewhere. His comment that once you have children to support your views change clearly is correct and is when a lot of people settle down to a more sensible - i.e. able to support the children career.

Who else? The last one on this episode who has died - I am so glad her family let her still be included and they were able to speak for her in a sense - she gave her life to children's librarian services etc.

The out spoken one on disability benefits with rheumatism sounds just like she always did - chirpy and happy to speak back at the interviewer. I am sorry she has her health issues and I think she was one whose husband had died too.

There must have been one more on this episode at the start - may be another boy. Oh yes the one who is writing a novel and plays the guitar. I can't remember much about him.

I've not seen Tony the taxi driver yet although I heard him on r4 recently.

All very nicely done as usual. Aspects of all their personalitiies and I assume the effect of whether they were loved or neglected or sent away (whether to a children's home or boarding school at 6) I am sure can be seen - the essence of most of us is probably there by 7 adn the Jesuits from whom the quote comes always said.

Again I am grateful they all let us see into their lives and I hope they can ignore any nasty comments people make particualrly these days when they can see it on line. In the 60s and 70s it would just be a tabloid newspaper and once read disappeared in effect so much less of an impact.

I find it quite depressing that for most of them life mapped out as you might expect. Not really a socially mobile society. The guy who went to Australia seemed to buck the trend, ending up a lot happier than his initial deck of cards would allow. The other guy from the children's home (Symon) appears to have pulled his life together at least superficially but recreated his own fractured home life with the five children who by the sounds of it didn't have much to do with him for a long time. The two posh boys who didn't teach were staggeringly unaware of the country around them at seven and remained so throughout. I guess that's an achievement of sorts

I find John quite likeable and I think it’s important to hear him talk about his difficulties. However I have no sympathy for him declaring that it’s harder to be rich than poor ,or whatever privileged claptrap he came out with.

Harold I agree. I think they've all been successful but within their own class parameters. I think if this had been done a generation earlier more social mobility might have been witnessed,