Eight questions · The Up Series
What do you want to be?
The question asked at seven, held up against every film after
I want to be a jockey.
When I grow up I want to be an astronaut, but if I can't be an astronaut I think I'd like to be a coach driver.
I want to teach people who are not civilised to be, more or less, good.
I want to find out all about the moon and all that.
Well, before I'm old enough to get a job, I'll just walk around, and see what I can find.
I don't think you want to go to university if you want to be an astronaut.
Work
What they do, why, and whether they still do it
I'm a school mobile librarian and assistant to the young people's officer. I visit schools with the van.
No, I haven't really; I suppose I just like hard work, I don't know.
Teaching children the beauty of books and watching their faces as books unfold to them, it's just fantastic.
I worked all my life, I can't imagine not working.
You don't live to work, you work to live.
If David Cameron can find me a job then I'll go to work.
You don't live to work, you work to live.
Nothing has really changed, I'm still working for Queen Mary, 20 years under my belt.
Marriage, children, home
Marrying young, how the children turned out, who the father was
Say you had a wife and had to eat what they cooked you. And say I don't like greens, well I don't like greens.
I don't think having a father has an effect on me.
You do think, 'Christ, what have I done?'
They have everything, they have a father.
I was born for the responsibility.
You have to accept it's their lives.
The longest engagement known to man.
You're going to uni. You're going.
We've been together now over 20 years, still not married, never say never... but no plans.
I don't really know how I've got over things with him, to be honest... Sometimes, I don't feel that I have, to be perfectly honest with you. But I'm still here. (Debbie Walker)
The single moment of pure, unadulterated joy in my life.
Glenn decided he's fed up of being on the longest engagement of all time.
It's still in my head now, I should have asked. First, who's my dad? What did he do? Where did he come from?
I know nothing about the man, I never saw him.
Class and chances
The founding thesis: what background gave, what it took, and whether the chances were used
I read the Financial Times.
I'm going to Charterhouse, and after that Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
I read the Observer and the Times.
I think it's not a bad idea to pay for schools, because if we didn't, schools would be so nasty and crowded.
What does a university mean?
I'm glad to have avoided the prep school–Marlborough–Oxbridge conveyor belt.
I've had the opportunities in life that I've wanted.
I say I've had more.
I think we all could have gone any way we wanted at that time, within our own capabilities.
We only had a limited choice, to be fair.
We only had a limited choice anyway, truth be told. We didn't have the choice of private education because they couldn't have afforded it.
I have no doubts I could have done more. Maybe I was lazy.
I was a lazy sod, who didn't have any desire to try harder.
Are you happy?
Asked in every film: health, state of mind, contentment
Things have fallen into line and everything. And I've started to enjoy life.
I wake up every day, not knowing what's going to happen.
I can't use my hands, I can't sit for long, I can't stand for long, I can't walk very far.
My glass is always half full, never half empty.
I've reached a level in my life that I'm happy with; I enjoy being me.
What I thought was stress was nothing.
I'm happy with the way my life has gone.
I see my life as a failure.
I'm focused on fairly short-term futures at the moment.
surprised to be sort of contented
I think I'm living my second childhood actually.
I needed peace for myself. The sunshine helps and makes me feel better.
Britain and politics
Thatcher, Cameron, Britain in 1964, where humanity is heading
I'm more reactionary than most.
The most incompetent, uncaring bloody shower we've ever had.
In 1964 it was illegal to be openly homosexual in Britain, women could not get an abortion, and you could have a sign that said, 'No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs' over your establishment.
I think the arc of humanity is still going in the right way.
The programme
What being filmed feels like, the role the edit assigned, why they stayed or left
You wouldn't have asked some of the other people in this programme that question.
How dare you say that to me! Is that a worry? Why would that be a worry?
I think I'm actually more intelligent than you thought I would be.
You will edit this programme as you see fit, I've got no control.
I suppose I have this ridiculous sense of loyalty to it, even though I hate it.
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.
I don't regard myself as particularly typical of the type that I was no doubt selected to represent.
The premise on which the programme was based ... was outmoded even in 1964.
The decision to come back was on a purely mercenary basis because I wanted to get some promotion for the band I played in.
A little pill of poison in my life.
I felt that you treated us, as women, totally different, and I didn't like it.
By the time we hit 21, I thought you'd have a better idea of how the world works — you still asked us the most mundane domestic questions.
When you guys pack up and leave, and I'm fairly sure we're not going to do this again, I'll feel there's a hole in things that I haven't experienced since I was six.
What I always found difficult was that I was the only woman on my own and that I was being slightly got at.
To me, this is tremendously important... In my life, there's always been another episode of this coming up.
I don't know anything else that's followed people for 63 years. It's incredible.
Seeing it come to its successful conclusion, with a symmetry between seven and 70.
I never liked Michael.
I felt I'd been set up to represent an outmoded class system that has no validity in the modern world.
He had a sneering and somewhat supercilious manner. I didn't feel he was on my side.
Michael Apted just wasn't interested in me as a person — he wanted the fake me, as a bogeyman.
There is an issue over TV and what it does to people. That was my concern with Michael and why I didn't engage from 28.
I felt he had cast everyone and they had their role to fulfil. And didn't they know it in some cases.
We had no idea really of what was going on... We'd never given consent. Our parents didn't really know what was going on. And I was stuck with two boys who, while they were perfectly nice, weren't mates of mine.
He just had this idea that, even at 21, we were just going to be little women in the kitchen.
And with that, I'm saying: done, I'm finished, over!
He really thought we'd all be housewives and maybe not particularly interesting.
I'm full of pride because I do recognise it's an achievement.
The one thing I have taken from this programme is that my story is special because it has been seen. Not because it is special. Just because it's been seen.
But the tabloids really went for me, and were quite vitriolic. I was taken aback by that, and so I left.
I really don't think there will be anything like this on TV again.
Looking back
Regret, what mattered, how they are remembered
I don't think I quite realised just how much she was adored by the wider community.
I am the proof that you need to push yourself and go on.
I slept in a bulldozer once. I slept in bitterly cold huts and on seats and things.
She was a very special person.
You need a good family. You need it for yourself and you need it to make your life whole... learn to be kind to other people and forgive them for their failings.