# The Seven Up children turn 70, and the cameras stop > Sixty-two years after a film crew met 14 British seven-year-olds, the last episode asks whether any of it was written from the start. - Title: The Seven Up children turn 70, and the cameras stop | Shortify - Summary: Sixty-two years after a film crew met 14 British seven-year-olds, the last episode asks whether any of it was written from the start. The Jesuit promise that… - Keywords: documentary, class, britain, ageing, television, news, entertainment, Seven, children, turn, cameras, stop - Source: Dailymail — https://dailymail.com/tvshowbiz/article-16124581/The-Seven-kids-70-Whats-children-met-62-years-ago-trail-blazing-series-finally-comes-end.html?ito=1490&ns_campaign=1490&ns_mchannel=rss - Published: 2026-09-13T06:56:52+00:00 - Read time: 3 min - Topics: documentary, class, britain, ageing, television, news, entertainment ## One line, every episode A Jesuit motto has opened every instalment of the Up series since the beginning. The whole project is an attempt to prove it or break it. > Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man. ## Back every seven years Director Michael Apted returned to the same 14 people every seven years, starting in 1964 when they were all seven years old. ## The last time 70 Up is the final film, and Apted is not behind it. He died in 2021, leaving the participants to close the story themselves. ## Does it still ring true At 70 they look back and test the motto against their own lives. Some recognise the child they were, others barely know him. ## Bruce meets his younger self Bruce Balden was at boarding school when he was picked, and became a teacher. Watching the boy on screen, he wants to tell him it works out. > 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. ## A father far away At seven, Bruce wanted one thing: to see his dad, a soldier posted to Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. ## The poem that came late In the final film Bruce reads a poem in which his father sets out what he felt. The distance had not been one way. > 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. ## Built to test class The original programme was an examination of the British class system. The children were chosen as a cross-section, not as individuals. ## Who the fourteen were Three girls and a boy from the East End, a girl from wealthier London, two boys from a children's home, four public schoolboys, a Yorkshire farmer's son and two from suburban Liverpool. ## Picked for talking East End girl Jackie Bassett got in because she would not stop chattering. Six decades on she says nothing about that has changed. > In our house, if you didn't speak up you didn't get heard. I don't think I've changed. ## Jackie's long road Married at 19, divorced, married again, moved to Scotland, had three children, divorced again, and raised them as a single mother. ## The one regret Jackie weighs it all up without bitterness. The thing she would change is stopping her education when she did. > Things could have been better, but things could have been a lot worse. ## Two did not reach 70 Lynn, one of the East End girls, died in 2013. Nick, the Yorkshire boy who became a nuclear scientist, died three days after filming 70 Up. ## Neil, the hardest years The Liverpool boy was homeless by 28 Up and in a council house by 35 Up. A short marriage had ended by the time 63 Up was filmed. ## Now living in France Neil has settled abroad and looks back with a diagnosis the cameras never named at the time. He thinks depression has been there all along. ## Not everyone stayed Most turned up every seven years, but some skipped episodes, walked away entirely, or disliked the version of themselves that reached the screen. ## The lawyer's objection John Brisby, a public schoolboy who became a barrister, felt the films cast him as a symbol rather than a person. > set up to represent an outmoded class system that had no validity in the modern world ## Nothing was staged Bruce compares it with what television does now and says the Up crew never engineered a moment. The brief was simply to talk. > Some reality TV now is very contrived. We had none of that. ## Pride, not regret Bruce says being filmed never altered a decision he made, and he would not undo any of it. What began as an experiment became a record of a country. > I take pride in being part of what's turned out to be a social document about Britain. ## Where it ends 70 Up airs Tuesday at 9pm on ITV1. After 62 years, there will be no next visit. ## Key takeaway The Jesuit promise that a seven-year-old contains the adult held only loosely. Class shaped the starting line, but chance, illness and grief did most of the rest.