The Seven Up kids at 70! What's become of the children we met 62 years ago as trail-blazing series finally comes to an end

‘Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.’ This Jesuit motto has opened every episode of director Michael Apted’s ground-breaking Up series, which has endeavoured to catch up with the same 14 people every seven years since 1964, when they were seven years old. 

Now, in the final show – without Apted, who died in 2021 – those children are 70. So as they look back on their lives, does that adage still ring true?

No one is untouched by change. Some have had happy lives, others not so much. Bruce Balden was at boarding school when he was chosen, and he became a teacher. 

‘I do see myself in that seven-year-old,’ he says. ‘I don’t know whether some aspects of my character are immutable or I’ve changed. But I see a rather lost soul. I want to reassure him that it will be a ride, but life is going to be all right.’

Seven-year-old Bruce just wanted to see his father, a soldier in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Now he reads a poem in which his dad explains his feelings for his son. ‘He missed me as much as I missed him. If I’d known, I’d have made more of an effort to make up for lost time.’

Intended as an examination of the British class system, the children were chosen from a cross-section of society. 

There were three girls and a boy from London’s East End, a girl from a wealthier part of London, two boys from a children’s home, four public schoolboys, a Yorkshire farmer’s son and two boys from a middle-class Liverpool suburb.

East End girl Jackie Bassett was picked because ‘I wouldn’t stop talking. In our house, if you didn’t speak up you didn’t get heard. I don’t think I’ve changed.’ 

She married at 19, divorced, remarried, moved to Scotland, had three kids, divorced again and was a single mother.

‘Things could have been better, but things could have been a lot worse,’ she says. ‘There are points in my life that I would rather not have happened. The only thing I do wish is that I’d gone on to do more education.’

Her fellow East Ender Lynn died in 2013 and Yorkshire-born Nick, who became a nuclear scientist, died just three days after filming for 70 Up.

Liverpudlian Neil has led the most chaotic life. He was homeless for 28 Up, in a council house by 35 Up, had a brief marriage that had ended by 63 Up, and now lives in France. He thinks he’s probably always suffered from depression.

Most appeared every seven years, but some have missed episodes, dropped out or been unhappy with their portrayal. Public schoolboy and lawyer John Brisby felt he’d been ‘set up to represent an outmoded class system that had no validity in the modern world’.

But Bruce has no gripes. ‘Some reality TV now is very contrived,’ he says. ‘We had none of that. It was just, “Tell us what you’re doing, where you’re at, what you’re interested in.”

‘I’ve been asked if being on the programme has affected my choices, and I can’t say it has. I’ve no regrets. I take pride in being part of what’s turned out to be a social document about Britain.’

70 Up, Tuesday, 9pm, ITV1.