David Pearce – Popular Culture and Personal Passions

28 Up saw two of the original 14 participants bow out, one temporarily, one permanently. Of the original three prep school boys, only Andrew took part. John said he had nothing to add to what he had said at 21, although he would return to the series 7 years later for 35 Up. Charles was a different matter. He had become an assistant producer at the BBC in the seven years since the previous programme. When he declined to take part, the producer Michael Apted rang him up and, by his own admission, ‘went berserk’ and completely destroyed the relationship he had built up with Charles over the previous programmes. Charles would make no more appearances in the programme and even tried to sue the programme makers to force them to remove all images of him from 49 Up onwards. He failed, but the programme did not mention him from then on, and he appeared only briefly in shots from the first three programmes of the three together. So, what of the remaining 12?

28 Up

Nick had moved to America by the time 28 Up was filmed. He had become a lecturer at University of Wisconsin specialising and lecturing in fusion science. Married to Jackie, he was building a career in the US after briefly working in the UK in the same field but concluding that the very low wages were a good indicator of the lack of importance attached to nuclear fusion in the UK. He is clearly very happy with his new lifestyle and extremely engaged with the academic side of life. When Jackie mentioned that she was able to work from home for about half the week as she had a computer at home, I just felt as though the US must have seemed light years ahead of the UK standard of living at the time. Given that 40 years ago the idea of working from home in academia was obviously widely accepted, it seems a great shame that it has become so controversial here and in the US in 2024. Jackie was clearly reluctant to be interviewed, but her guarded approach and comments about feeling so far away from family with so little opportunity to contact them apparently led viewers of the time to write letters about the marriage being doomed. She never appeared in the series again, but the fact that the partners of the original participants were becoming ‘fair game’ probably changed the nature of some of the interactions after this programme.

Tony had spent the seven years since the previous programme passing the Knowledge and becoming a London black cab driver and he had also married Debbie who had had two children by the time 28 Up came along. He really impressed me in this programme as someone who had become very comfortable in himself at work and at home. He spoke about education, which he had dismissed as unimportant seven years earlier, and admitted that it was a silly comment to make, expressing the hope that his children would make more of their own education than he had. He does however come out firmly against the idea of boarding school, saying that despite their other advantages those who are sent there lose out on so much family time, and that he as a Dad wants to be there to see every milestone of his children’s lives. Alongside his cab driving he was also training to become an actor after a couple of appearances as an extra. He was clearly not one to stand still, and his ebullience and humour were not only intact, but more obvious by the time he reached 28. You got the feeling that Debbie was perhaps effectively dealing with three ‘children’ at times (!) but they appeared to be very happy in their relationship. Particularly as he started from a lower base than most of the other participants, you could argue that Tony has been the most successful of the fourteen children up to this point, and he was definitely great fun to listen to.

Bruce, who was privately educated, was teaching mathematics in the East End of London when 28 Up was being filmed, ironically at Tony’s old school. He was clearly still very socially conscious at this point, having described himself as the only socialist in his village, and concerned about the inherent unfairness of life where opportunity comes much more easily to the upper classes. He sees his job in this instalment as a way of somehow ironing out the disparities and he has some choice words about the then Conservative government. Peter, who had also become a teacher made similarly disparaging comments, and those comments caused such a backlash in the tabloid press that he refused to come back to the series for nearly three decades. It was an unwitting, I think, insight into the influence of class that was the initial point of the series. Bruce got away with it because, I suppose, he was ‘one of us’ whilst Peter, a Liverpudlian of lower social status, was the chosen target because he was speaking out of turn about his ‘betters’. Well, that’s my take anyway!

Andrew, the remaining member of the trio of ‘posh boys’ had become a solicitor at the time of 28 Up and was married to Jane who described herself as a ‘down to earth Yorkshire girl’ in very cut glass tones! She was clearly from a similar social strata, but not, as she said herself, a ‘deb’! The two seemed to be very content both in their careers and their early married life and they already had a London flat as well as a country farmhouse that they were in the process of converting. Andrew always seemed a nice engaging personality, if quite reserved in front of the cameras, and in the way that he spoke you got the impression that he was getting more broad minded as the years progressed.

Paul and Symon, the two boys we first met at the charity boarding school when they were 7, could scarcely have had more divergent experiences in the next 21 years. Paul, now every inch an Aussie after living there for 20 years, had got married to Susie who had had two children, and now had his own business as a bricklayer. However, for me a couple of other elements of his life were of far more interest. Firstly, he was already a homeowner in a ‘working class suburb’ of Melbourne which looked every inch a middle class suburb to me and clearly part of the 80s version of the Australian dream that Erinsborough was based on. As with Nick in the US, you knew that there was no way he could have aspired to that standard of living in the UK had he stayed, something he somewhat uncomfortably admitted. Symon, on the other hand, was still working in the freezer store at Wall’s and had a wife and five children. He admitted that he had no drive to move or try for a promotion and was happy to see life chugging along. It left me wondering what would have happened if their life stories had been reversed. I got the impression that Paul would have succeeded in the UK but not reached the same level, while Symon would probably have been in a better situation but would almost certainly not have made as much of the opportunity. It makes you wonder how their basic natures and family backgrounds were part of the overall mix, as much as the differences between the ostensibly more egalitarian Australian society and the class bound UK.

Now on to Neil, the participant with the most extreme change of circumstances. After having dropped out of university, 21 Up found him squatting in London. By the time 28 Up came around he was living off grid in the Scottish Highlands in a caravan, relying on a combination of occasional work and social security benefits. He was clearly quite vulnerable in terms of his mental health, and it was very sad to see the happy seven year old two decades earlier become the withdrawn troubled young man of 28. It was quite riveting TV as he opened up on his regrets and his challenges in a way that appears to modern eyes to be very unusual. He wasn’t doing it for publicity, he was genuinely thinking through things on camera with a cameraman in attendance and Michael Apted off screen asking the questions but otherwise staying silent as he expounded his ideas at length. When you compare it to modern TV which would be full of leading questions, mawkish background music and voiceover commentary that alters the feel of an entire situation, based upon the prejudices of the filmmakers, it truly is a different and much better form of documentary making. I’m not sure that we can put the process into reverse, but I would love to see the response of modern audiences to careful, sympathetic film making like this.

Now, we turn to the four young women who were part of the original 14 children. Sue, Lynn and Jackie are once again interviewed as a trio. It’s really interesting how these three young women have kept their same roles in the friendship with Lynn, still a school librarian and therefore appropriately, being the quiet one, Sue the seemingly happy go lucky member of the trio, and Jackie the outspoken and combative one. All three are, at the time of 28 Up, married with children and seemingly quite content, although unlike the male participants we don’t see them with their partners. Jackie comments on the sexist nature of the questions asked to the girls as opposed to the boys, a theme that she apparently returned to in future programmes. Lynn has not got a particularly prominent role in this programme, perhaps because her life was in a very similar position to how it had been 7 years earlier. There is, as Jackie observes, still this gender divide that the programme is guilty of in assuming that women will become wives and mothers and give up their employment.

Much to my delight, Suzy had turned things around by 28. The 21 year old chain smoker with a cynical view of marriage has been replaced by a happily married, effervescent young woman with a seemingly besotted husband, Rupert, and two children. She looks back with a mixture of sensitivity and humour at her younger self and although she still regards the whole programme as somewhat silly is far more at ease than we’ve ever seen her before. She and Rupert both boarded from a very early age, but when she is asked whether she might want the same for her children she says that it is far too early to live away from home. It’s interesting how she echoes Tony’s views in her very different way.

It was a fascinating two hours spent in the company of a dozen people who I have started to really invest in emotionally. I think that having watched the first four episodes in a month, I have seen patterns in the lives of these young men and women that have been fascinating and as someone who loves social history I have seen changes in views, surroundings and society at large that give snapshots of what the world was like in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It truly is the jewel in the crown of British television and I can’t wait to see these people at the age of 35 at the beginning of the 90s. See you next time!

Bringing the cast together

This time, the film starts with the 14 children having been brought together as a whole group to watch the first two shows of the series in a small cinema. I can only imagine how mortifying it must have been for them to see their younger selves as (sometimes) precocious children and (mostly) moody mid teens! Don’t forget, documentaries seldom if ever got repeated so it would have been almost certainly the first time they had seen either documentary since its release. I would have hated it but like all the children, at this point, I would have felt something of a responsibility to keep going. After the showings they are shown having drinks and food together leading to a very interesting scene between would be East End wide boy, Tony, and the outwardly very privileged John. Tony, very perceptively muses on the ability of the documentary makers to choose the scenes they want to show in order to create characters for the participants. He talks about John being made to look like the good one and Tony made to look like the bad lad. John smiles and points out that he thinks it may well be the other way round to the audience! So, how were the 21 year olds portrayed and how did they react to the way their younger selves were shown?

21 Up

For me, the star of the show this time round was Tony. He has grown from a potential tearaway at 7 to a hard working 21 year old who has a fairly matter of fact attitude to the cards life deals him and invariably makes the most of his hand. An apprentice jockey at 14, he raced three times professionally for Tom Gosling’s stable. When asked by Michael Apted what happened he simply says that he obviously wasn’t good enough! At 14 he was asked what he would do if horse racing didn’t work out and he says he would become a taxi driver. At 21 he is on his moped getting the map of London fixed in his head for the famously tough test of black cab drivers, ‘The Knowledge’. He is a bookie’s runner at Walthamstow dog track and quite clearly fancies himself as a lady’s man. He talks about the three Fs which I will leave to your imagination and bemoans the fact that he couldn’t forget his current girlfriend! The overall impression you are left with is someone who is extremely adaptable and who will find a way to succeed whatever happens. He is certainly focused on whatever is next rather than what is past, a very useful skill to have.

John, who Tony was talking to in that opening scene is much more forthright about the way he and his class are viewed than either Andrew or Charles who perhaps feel the same way. He points out that just because they ended up going to the schools they predicted at 7 and, in two cases, the university courses they predicted, it wasn’t the fait accompli that it was perhaps portrayed as in the programme. The snapshots are simply that and don’t show the hours of study and exam preparation. While his point that they have to work hard is well made, he is still portrayed as very much a product of privilege, with a scene showing him as a ‘beater’ for hare coursing, which is now illegal, and a voiceover of him bemoaning the fact that opponents know nothing about it. He and Andrew are in their final years studying law at this point. Charles, meanwhile did not get into Oxbridge and was in his final year at Durham studying history. Although he still sounds very similar to John and Andrew, his long hair, casual clothing and casual demeanour indicate that he is now quite different from his two pre-prep school classmates.

The next trio are Jackie, Lynn and Sue, the three girls from the East End, two of whom went to comprehensive school and one who went to grammar. Lynn, the grammar school pupil, is married and working as a mobile school librarian by the time of 21 Up. She had thought of becoming a teacher but decided it was not for her, but she was clearly in her element as a librarian. Jackie also married at 19 and, amusingly, admits that there are times since the marriage when she has asked herself, ‘What have I done?’! Sue was not married at this point and worked in a bank, a job she was quite enjoying at the time. The three girls are apparently confident and still apparently a tight knit group despite the way that life has ushered them down different paths.

Nicholas, the boy who grew up on a Yorkshire Farm had lost his very strong regional accent, perhaps deliberately, and was at Oxford University studying physics. He seems to give a lie to the ‘show me the child at 7’ motto that set this documentary series on its path. He is no longer the shy, awkward child we saw at 7 or 14. Instead he is an outwardly, and seemingly inwardly, confident young man who knows where he wants to be and is enjoying Oxford enormously. When you saw him at 7, or actually 6 given that he was a year younger than the rest of the group, the young man in front of viewers now would be virtually impossible to picture.

Paul and Symon were two seven year olds we first met at a charity run boarding school. Symon stayed there until moving back in with his mother at 13 and Paul left at 8 when his family emigrated to Australia. Paul was flown back to the UK for the show and he and Paul are shown walking round their old school. Symon clearly sees it as a huge factor in his childhood but Paul remembers very little and is seemingly bored by the whole trip down memory lane. He has become a real Aussie in the intervening years with the accent and the lifestyle. He is a junior partner in a bricklaying firm and he has a settled relationship. Symon on the other hand is seemingly uncertain of where he wants to be in life and comes across as less confident and less focused. At that point, the era of £10 Poms, Australia truly was the land of opportunity and Paul has grabbed it with both hands. You wonder how different Symon’s life would have been if he had been given that opportunity.

Peter and Bruce are both at university at this point, the latter at Oxford studying Mathematics and taking his tutor through very complicated mathematical proofs that I couldn’t begin to follow! Bruce had been through a difficult time the previous year, when he signed up as secretary for four different societies and then had no time to do anything in any of his roles. Apparently he tried to avoid the rest of the students for 6 months as a result of the fallout! Peter doesn’t seem to want to be at university and has drifted through the course with little obvious enthusiasm. The two young men are still very much trying to find their way in the world.

Suzy, the star of Seven plus Seven saw her parents divorce at 14 and has since dropped out of university. Stress seems to have been an ever present theme of the intervening years and her brittleness is sad to see. She is travelling abroad on holidays seemingly to have something to do, but with the anchor of a strong family unit removed in many ways, she is drifting and cynical about the whole series and, indeed, pretty much anything else.

Finally, we have Neil, resentful of his own parents, another university drop out and squatting in a flat with a cat for company. He is quite matter of fact about squatting pointing out that otherwise this would be just one more empty flat with no purpose. It was quite interesting to see how squatting was so well organised and regulated at the time! Neil is clearly very unhappy and very directionless. Whether the documentary makers had an inkling that he would become such a central figure later on is open to conjecture, but you can’t help but see some foreshadowing here.

My reaction

This episode clearly shows that the adult versions of the children we already know are indeed shaped by their upbringing and experiences, but in ways that we can’t always predict. Seeing this series one instalment a week rather than one every seven years means you can make connections much more easily, but the danger is that you fall foul of the Latin phrase ‘Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc’ which means ‘After it therefore because of it’. Are you looking for causal links that aren’t there? Perhaps. Did the viewers at the time do this? Almost certainly. It really gets into its stride here as a proper social and historical document and it is valuable far beyond that as an insight into lives you otherwise wouldn’t have any understanding of. 28 Up next and one of the most famous strands of the entire series. No spoilers though!