70 Up - ITV teaser for "later this year"

[Rostio]

This looks fabulous!

My favourites Neil, Symon and Bruce are mentioned, Suzy and Charles return to the programme and tributes to the lovely Nick, Lynn and of course Michael Apted.

Placemark here for sharing the latest news?

Yes they make an interesting comparison - all three boys suffered the separation/broken family situation but I’d say Bruce as a young adult was a lot more confident. Possibly not as much as the other three boys appeared to be but the advantageous education leading to Oxford showed and he started his career in the city. If Bruce had stuck with that path instead of switching to a more “public service” type career he might well be as well off as the three prep school boys or Suzy.

I really don’t think Paul or Symon ever had a realistic chance of making that kind of wealth - their childhood disadvantages included limited education and more external responsibilities.

Its interesting how even amongst the wealthy classes, young boarding has gone out of fashion. Bruce would have been with a sizeable cohort of boys whose parents were senior military/overseas civil service postings or similar and in the same boat. I can remember talking to the mother of one of DC1’s nursery school friends about boarding - she was a military wife of a senior officer. They were looking for boarding from five/six close to a set of DGPs due to the frequent moves and rotations and the alternative was a new school every year or two for the DC. At that time the ratings’ children just had to follow as the school allowances were not sufficient to pay for boarding - it was regular new schools or split families. My DC are young end millennials so not that long ago.

@Auburngal yes what a horrid bully. Fancy a school allowing that to happen. Those ‘leadership’ roles aren’t a great idea when left unchecked. You do hear a lot about nasty bullying in public schools esp back then as an accepted consequence. I wonder where that was? Not a good advert!!

TBH this kind of bullying happened in state schools as well and often with the same mindset from parents and teachers - "toughens them up". Bullying of children who were in any way different was a social norm rather than a class norm.

It doesn’t toughen them up. I was bullied at school for being crap at PE (I didn’t know I had dyspraxia) a stutter (mostly grown out of) and my hair colour.

I heard one of the bullies died last year. Didn’t find out what was the cause of death. It released something inside me of relief

Thank you for the heads up that it's on streaming. I wouldn't be able to manage 9pm tonight. I've just started watching it and have goosebumps and already welled up.

Going back to what people were saying above, I think Bruce is a bit different as it was his father's services/religious background that got him access to a public school education. I'm not saying he wasn't from a privileged background but it feels a bit different to the others - Suzy, John, Andrew and Charles.

Oh I fully agree, I just don’t think it was a public school thing, it was equally common across society.

Hmm. There's not a lot of new footage so far.

Interested to see how they reintroduce Charles. As he is not in any promo photos or videos

Is anyone watching this?

Feel so sorry for Neil but he seems contented enough in his French house. A real rolling stone.

I have been engaged with this for as long as I could've been, I find it very emotional

Neil seems a tortured soul. Although he seems slightly more content in his elder years

It’s very poignant seeing how their lives have finally ended up.

I wonder if this format would work now? It’d be interesting if they started again.

Yes its 80-90% old takes with a scant minute or two of solo talking head at 70 with no mention of spouses/family for the most part. It seemed particularly odd covering Lynn and Nick without mentioning they are dead.

I hope this means they are doing all the round up this week and will focus more on individual updates and group retrospective next week. I’d love to hear more about how they have found retirement (or ongoing work), growing families and grandchildren, losses of the last of the previous generation etc as well as their thoughts on the overall process. Its the updates which are the best part after all and this time I’d really like to hear more about the process for them and how they feel about it now considering the significance of the experiment.

I felt the same. However, despite his difficulties, what an amazing and interesting life he's had. There's a fearlessness about him.

Like pp I also felt very emotional watching this.

Exactly what i thought.
i thought they would show more about Tony and his family and talk about what he’s done for the last 7 years. But they have just rehashed a lot of old clips and a few minutes of his recent life.

Same with Neil. Although it the few minutes we did see of him he finally seemed settled and happy which is great to see.

There is Millennium UP which last updated in 2021 when they were 28. It has had a higher drop out rate so far which is no surprise I think.

I feel like they all need a programme each. So many questions still. Bruce's "my heart's desire" voice is heartbreaking but what a lovely man.

I wonder if the programme steered them in a particular direction. Knowing you had to update again in 7 years might make you over conscious of choosing a particular path. A lot do seem like to have followed their expected path but, I wonder if being in programme pushed that a bit.

Yes they definitely need a programme each. I want to hear about their lives, plans for the future, views of the world etc

Yes, Bruce seemed truly nice.
Lovely to see that Symon found a family of his own too - his second wife seemed like a mother figure.
I wonder if they will talk about those that have died next time.

I read Nick’s footage is next week’s show and he recorded a piece for this when he was had not far from death. He died less than a week later.

2 out 14 dying is a similar proportion of people born in 1956 across the UK who are no longer with us.

So Sue had both parents at her wedding when she married post-63. That must be extremely unusual.