Nick Hitchon · The Up Series, 7 to 70
Nick is the series' clearest story of class mobility: a boy from a one-room school in a Dales valley who went to Oxford, took a doctorate at 23 and spent forty years as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, chairing the department and being repeatedly named an outstanding teacher. The price was distance — from England, from his parents, and eventually from a first marriage the audience had judged after one film — and a research dream (fusion) that never arrived in his lifetime. He never skipped a film despite calling the process agonising, arguing it would be 'pathetic' to opt out. After revealing throat cancer in 63 Up he retired in 2022, then in 2023 emailed producer Claire Lewis asking to record one last interview; that interview, filmed three days before his death on 23 July 2023, is what persuaded ITV to make 70 Up (broadcast 15 and 22 September 2026, directed by Asif Kapadia), in which he appears posthumously and to which the film is dedicated.
Appeared in every film. His first wife Jackie declined to appear in 35 Up and 42 Up after the viewer reaction to 28 Up. Nick appears in 70 Up (ITV1/ITVX, 15 and 22 September 2026, dir. Asif Kapadia) posthumously: in 2023 he emailed producer Claire Lewis asking to record a final interview, which was filmed in the US three days before his death on 23 July 2023; that interview is what persuaded the team to make 70 Up.
died 23 July 2023 in Madison, Wisconsin, aged 65, of complications of throat cancer; recorded a final interview for 70 Up three days before his death
Age 7 · 1964 · Seven Up!
A serious, blunt-fringed farm boy from a remote Dales valley, chosen to stand for rural Britain. He already had an appetite for science and flatly declined to discuss girls.
I want to find out all about the moon and all that.
- Living on the family farm at Arncliffe, Littondale, in the Yorkshire Dales
- Walking four miles to a one-room village primary school
- Said he wanted to find out all about the moon
- Refused to answer questions about girls — a running joke in later films
- Only 6 at broadcast, a year younger than the other children
Age 14 · 1970 · 7 Plus Seven
Away at grammar school in Skipton, an awkward teenager who had left the farm behind mentally and was set on science. He resented the second round of filming.
- A boarder at Ermysted's Grammar School in Skipton (attended 1968–1975)
- Said he liked physics and chemistry and did not want to stay on the farm
- Later said he was 'furious' at being filmed again at 14, having thought the first film a one-off
- Shy and reluctant on camera; still refused the girlfriend question
Age 21 · 1977 · 21 Up
The Dales farm boy had reached Oxford on merit — the series' clearest case of upward mobility. He was polite but openly ambivalent about being filmed.
- Undergraduate reading physics at Merton College, Oxford
- Told Apted on camera he did not much like the interrogation every seven years
- Laughed off the girlfriend question yet again
- Aiming at research; nuclear fusion was his hope for clean energy
Age 28 · 1984 · 28 Up
Newly emigrated to Madison, Wisconsin, as a young academic with a doctorate and a wife who was also building a career. The couple's frank interview drew a hostile audience reaction that shaped Jackie's later absence.
- Married Jackie (Jacqueline Bush), another Briton, in 1979
- Completed an Oxford D.Phil. in engineering science in 1981, aged 23
- Joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison electrical and computer engineering faculty in 1982, aged 25, working on fusion/plasma theory
- Jackie appeared with him and spoke for an egalitarian two-career marriage; many viewers concluded the marriage was doomed, and she refused to appear again
Age 35 · 1991 · 35 Up
Settled in the American Midwest as a father and scientist, still chasing fusion. His wife's absence from the film left the marriage a visible blank.
- Tenured researcher at UW–Madison; son Adam born in the late 1980s
- Jackie declined to be filmed
- Had been told by an Oxford colleague that fusion 'was never going to work' but persisted
- Later described Adam's birth as 'the single moment of pure, unadulterated joy in my life' (70 Up)
Age 42 · 1998 · 42 Up
Professionally at the top of his field, but the film returned him to Yorkshire and to a marriage under strain. The fusion dream was quietly giving way to more applied plasma work.
- Full professor since 1994
- Granada flew him back to England for filming; he revisited the Dales
- He and (off-camera) Jackie acknowledged strains in the marriage, worsened by distance from family and friends in England
- Research had shifted from fusion toward computational plasma physics and semiconductor-processing plasmas
Age 49 · 2005 · 49 Up
The painful end of his first marriage — which he said felt 'like a death' — and a second marriage to a fellow academic. A department chairmanship marked his standing at Wisconsin.
- Divorced from Jackie (final in February 2001)
- Married Cryss Brunner in 2001 — a professor of education about ten years his senior whom he met at a graduation ceremony; she was then teaching in Minneapolis
- Said talking about the divorce and its effect on his relationship with his son Adam (then 18) was the hardest part of the film
- Had served as chair of the UW–Madison ECE department 1999–2002
Age 56 · 2012 · 56 Up
A respected teacher who had made peace with fusion's failure to arrive, guarding his parents' privacy while speaking candidly about his own. The most self-aware participant about what the series costs its subjects.
No, I don't [regret it]. It would be kind of pathetic to opt out of it. Even if it's painful, it's important.
- Interviewed together with Suzy, a friend through their shared rural upbringing
- Refused to elaborate on his parents' declining health
- Spoke about the disappointments of a research career: fusion was 'twenty years away' when he started and is 'thirty years away' now
- Recognised as outstanding instructor five times by engineering undergraduates; author of three books including Plasma Processes for Semiconductor Fabrication
- Called watching the films 'the therapy session from hell' in a 2012 interview
Age 63 · 2019 · 63 Up
The film's hardest interview: a newly diagnosed cancer patient, recently bereaved, speaking with characteristic honesty about a shortened horizon. He was nonetheless still working and still grateful for his marriage.
I'm focused on fairly short-term futures at the moment.
- Diagnosed with a cancerous mass in his throat shortly before filming (some reports say ten days before)
- His father had died, leading him to reflect on mortality
- Still teaching at UW–Madison; mentioned that Theresa May was an Oxford contemporary
- Married to Cryss; said he feared for those he loved more than for himself
- Told Apted he was focused on 'fairly short-term futures'
Age 70 · 2026 · 70 Up · remembered (after their death)
Nick did not live to be 70; 70 Up carries the interview he asked to give while dying of throat cancer, three years before broadcast. Frail and honest to the end, he said the series had been 'tremendously important' to him and that he would miss it, and named his son's birth as the purest joy of his life.
The single moment of pure, unadulterated joy in my life.
To me, this is tremendously important... In my life, there's always been another episode of this coming up.
- Appears posthumously: the interview was recorded in 2023, three days before his death on 23 July 2023 (ITV described it as 'poignant and moving')
- Had retired from UW–Madison in spring 2022; was still marking students' dissertations on his phone in his final days, according to producer Claire Lewis
- He initiated the film — a 2023 email to Lewis asking to record one last interview led ITV to commission 70 Up after Apted's death
- Visibly frail, using a walker; spoke about his mobility and his health
- Called his son Adam's birth 'the single moment of pure, unadulterated joy in my life'
- Reflected that in his life 'there's always been another episode of this coming up'; the film remembers him and Lynn Johnson (d. 2013)
Turning points
- Age 14: Boarding at Ermysted's Grammar School in Skipton took him off the farm and into science.
- Age 21: Reading physics at Merton College, Oxford — the moment the class prediction of the series broke.
- Age 28: Emigrated to Madison, Wisconsin (1982) as a young academic with his wife Jackie; the audience reaction to their interview drove her out of the series.
- Age 49: Divorce from Jackie (2001) and remarriage to Cryss Brunner the same year.
- Age 63: Throat cancer diagnosed just before filming; he retired in 2022 and died in July 2023 after recording a final interview for 70 Up.
- Age 70: Appears posthumously in 70 Up (2026) via the interview he requested in 2023; the film exists because of that request.
Looking back
What people say
Nick is the standard example of the class prophecy failing: a one-room village school in the Dales, then Oxford, then a professorship in America and a department chair.
Viewers' reaction to his interview with his wife Jackie at twenty-eight drove her out of the films; it is the example most often used to show how hard the series' audience was on women.
He said filming was painful but never missed a film: "It would be kind of pathetic to opt out of it." The final interview he recorded three days before his death in 2023 is the reason 70 Up was made.
What this life shows
The price of rising is distance.
Leaving Britain, leaving his parents, leaving a marriage, and a fusion-research dream he never realised. People who cross into an elite world often carry the sense of not being one of them for the rest of their lives. The scholarship boy from a small town is usually written about as a figure of mild contempt; Nick's life is a good place to take the contempt out of the word.
The channel was given by the times.
He reached Oxford through a free grammar-school boarding place and the grants of the day. That road narrowed in Britain after his generation.
Knowing he would die, he finished saying what he had to say.
After the cancer diagnosis he asked for one last interview himself. When time gets short, people deal with what matters first.