Where are 7 Up! kids now? Femail reveals the fortunes of those filmed by the late Michael Apted

His long and varied career included directing everything from James Bond to Coronation Street but director Michael Apted’s best loved work was his groundbreaking documentary Up series. 

The British filmmaker who died last week at his Los Angeles home at the age of 79,  joined the projecy which began filming in May 1964 and followed the lives of a group seven-year-old children from different cross-sections of society, after taking over from Paul Almond in 1970.

It was originally planned as a one-off documentary for Granada Television, with children from various backgrounds interviewed across the years in a bid to examine the country’s class structure and how it shaped their futures. It was inspired by the Jesuit motto ‘Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man’. 

Every seven years the film crew revisited the group, with the most recent installment, 63 Up, airing in 2019. Of its original 14 cast members, 11 appeared in the programme.

Tony Walker, 65, now an actor and London taxi driver, was selected for the project while at an East End primary school in 1963 and went on to become one of its best-known characters. He was a close friend of Apted’s throughout his life and called his passing ‘a beacon of light going out in the industry’.

Here FEMAIL takes a look at how the lives of the rest of the Up cast members turned out.

Nicholas ‘Nick’ Hitchon 

Ahead of 63 Up, Dr Nick Hitchon, a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, revealed he had developed throat cancer and wasn’t likely to see the end of 2020.  

Apted said at the time of filming 63 Up: ‘[Nick] was the last interview we did and we were told he’d probably be dead in a few days or weeks. 

‘He was amazing. He said we could only do 10 minutes at a time and I deliberately didn’t see him until we had the camera there and rolling. 

‘He was very, very calm and very, very cool about it all. He then did an interview that lasted an hour and a half. I was gobsmacked by it. He really turned it on. He and I were really close. He was a real tower of strength for all of this, never letting me down.’

Nick was raised on a small farm in Arncliffe, a village in the Yorkshire Dales, and educated in a one-room school four miles’ walk from his home. 

He later attended a boarding school and went to Oxford University where, he mentions in 63 Up, Theresa May was a classmate.

Nick then moved to the US to work as a nuclear physicist, and married a fellow British immigrant, Jackie. His wife took part in 28 Up but was apparently unhappy about how viewers responded to her comments – with some declaring their marriage was doomed. 

She refused to feature in 35 Up and 42 Up, and by 49 Up they had divorced. Nick remarried Cryss Brunner, 10 years his senior, who taught in Minneapolis. 

During an appearance as a contestant on NPR game show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, Nick said he ‘did not like the way they’d portrayed me’ in the early Up documentaries.

‘It was clear that they were portraying me as a bumpkin. And, I mean, you know, I was mad,’ he revealed.  

Lynn Johnson

Jackie, Sue and Lynn were primary school friends picked from London’s East End to represent the working classes – three of only four female participants, something Apted later expressed regret over. 

The trio, who were seen playing together in the first documentary, remained friends throughout the process.  

Lynn, who dreamed of working at Woolworths as a child, married at 19, had two daughters and landed a job with a travelling children’s library before taking up a role at a school. She took early retirement when the department downsized and she was laid off.  

She sadly became the first cast member to die after a brief illness in 2013 – a year after the release of 56 Up. She was a doting grandmother of three and still married to her husband Russ.

Lynn had served as Chair of Governors of St Saviour’s primary school in Poplar, London, for over 25 years and after her death a section of the school library was renamed in her memory. 

Apted said of her passing: ‘She was a lovely woman. She was very bright and she had a rough life. She was one of our favourites because she was really straightforward and honest.’ 

Sue Davis

Sue, who works as an administrator at Queen Mary University of London, also married early, at 24, and was divorced by the age of 35. 

In 42 Up she told how she was living as a single mother and spoke about the fulfilment she got from her two children. 

She’d found love again with partner Glenn, and in 56 Up it was revealed they’d been engaged for 14 years. Seven years later, in 63 Up, they still hadn’t made it down the aisle.

Speaking to Radio Times, Sue discussed the fact she will be 70 when the next series comes around.

‘Personally, and just speaking for myself, I am in a good place but things are going to get worse,’ she said. ‘You’re going to get sicker and older. Both my parents are with me so I’m thinking, ‘Another seven years, who knows? Am I going to be here, are they going to be here?’ 

‘There’s an element that thinks this would be a good time to finish, but another part of me thinks seven till 70? It’s got a good ring.’

Sue, a fan of amateur dramatics, spoke of looking forward to retirement – adding that she would like to be living in an idyllic cottage in Devon or Cornwall.  

Jackie Bassett 

Mother-of-three and grandmother-of-five Jackie, who now lives in Motherwell after relocating to Scotland nearly 30 years ago, married at 19 and had several different jobs. 

She has arguably had the toughest time of the three, having gone through divorce twice, brought up her children as a single parent and lost her partner when he was hit by a car while undergoing cancer treatment.

Jackie has rheumatoid arthritis which means she’s unable to work. In June 2019 she told the Sunday Post: ‘It can be really debilitating and it all depends how I manage it.

‘There are days when I wake up and feel great and other days when I just want to turn over and not even get out of bed.

‘It is getting more difficult, but you have to get on with things and there are people who are a lot worse off than me.’

In 49 Up, Jackie gave Apted a piece of her mind for the type of questions he was asking and accused him of making too much of her illness. 

In the earlier programmes she’d felt the director had only spoken to the women about ‘domestic stuff’ whereas the boys were asked ‘political or theoretical or religious questions’.

She told the Guardian: ‘He had certain ideas about the way things should go, and for a long while he couldn’t deviate from that… I just decided that today’s the day that I tell him exactly what I’m thinking. He was a bit shocked by it.’ 

Speaking about her condition, she added: ‘It doesn’t rule me. Michael believes that’s the total reality of my life, but I don’t want to be seen that way.’  

Bruce Balden

As a child at a prestigious boarding school in Hampshire, Bruce was concerned with poverty and racial discrimination and aspired to become a missionary.

At the age of seven he said his greatest desire was to see his father, who was a soldier in Southern Rhodesia. His parents had separated, with Bruce returning to the UK with his mother. 

Bruce, who did get to see his dad again, went on to study maths at Oxford University and went on to teach his subject in London’s East End and Bangladesh before taking up a role at a well-regarded private school in St Albans.

He married a fellow teacher before 42 Up, and had two sons.

Bruce’s father watched the programme when he retired to the UK, and Bruce said he was proud of it. 

His sons also love it, though his wife merely accepts it and he said he would pull out if she ever objected. 

Speaking to The Telegraph on whether there is any truth in the programme’s main concept, which is ‘give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man,’ Bruce said: ‘There’s something from the seven-year-old in all of us, you can see that.

‘It certainly was a polemic about class to begin with, but it has become much more human than that with the stories.’

Neil Hughes

None of the children confounded viewers’ predictions more than Neil; he began the series as a bright-eyed pupil at a Liverpool school who played chess and hoped to go to Oxford – and the Moon.

By 7 Plus Seven (14 Up), Neil was a nervous, anxious shadow of his former self, after being tormented by bullies. By 21 Up he’d dropped out of Aberdeen University after one term and was living in a London squat working on building sites. 

Neil spent much of his twenties and early thirties a homeless drifter; after moving to Scotland he eventually moved into a council house in the Shetland Islands, where he wrote and appeared in a local pantomime.

By the time of 42 Up he was back in London and stayed temporarily in Bruce’s flat. Despite Neil’s eccentricities during his stint, they remained friends and Neil later did a reading at Bruce’s wedding.

Neil became involved in local council politics as a Liberal Democrat in the London Borough of Hackney, and completed a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Open University.

He was first elected to Wick ward on Hackney London Borough Council in 1996, and resigned his seat in 2000. By 49 Up he had found a sort of peace in Cumbria, was active in local politics and in 2010 stood for the Lib Dems in Carlisle, finishing third.

By 63 Up, Neil had married; however, he and his wife separated due to unspecified difficulties. He is also a lay preacher and has a home in France. 

His journey somewhat disproves the notion of destiny underlying the series; Neil previously said: ‘I think it was Albert Camus who said that life is what happens while you’re waiting for something else.’

Peter Davies 

Peter went to the same middle-class Liverpool suburban school as Neil and also had aspirations of becoming an astronaut. 

He drifted through university and by age 28 he was an underpaid and seemingly uninspired school teacher in Leicester. 

He dropped out of the series after 28 Up, when he came under fire in the tabloid press for expressing his views about the education system during Margaret Thatcher’s era in government. 

He said in 2012: ‘They decided they were going to portray me as the angry young Red in Thatcher’s England.

‘I was absolutely taken aback, genuinely shocked, at the level of ill-will directed towards me.’

The director’s commentary in 42 Up revealed he later divorced, took up study of the law, became a lawyer, remarried, had children and moved back to Liverpool. 

He returned to the series in 56 Up to promote his band, the Liverpool-based country-influenced The Good Intentions, and also appeared in 63 Up.

Tony Walker 

Tony, a lively seven-year-old from Bethnal Green in east London, spent most of the first programme getting into scraps with the posh boys. 

He dreamed of being a jockey and did manage to fulfil his ambition, albeit briefly, when he raced against Lester Piggott before becoming a taxi driver. 

Apted admitted Tony defied his expectations; he previously said: ‘When Tony was 21 he was hanging out at the dog track… I was convinced he’d be in the slammer by 28.’

To exaggerate his ‘cheeky chappy’ personality, during 21 Up Apted asked him to drive around the East End pointing out notorious haunts, including the pub where the Kray twins murdered a rival. 

Tony became a devoted family man, going on to marry Debbie, who was pregnant with their third child in 28 Up. She revealed candidly in 35 Up that they lost that baby, which put a tremendous strain on their relationship, but they went on to have another. 

In that same show, Tony – who had moved to Essex – admitted he struggled being in a monogamous relationship, and seven years later in 42 Up he made the shocking confession that he’d committed adultery, though he and Debbie managed to work through it.

By 49 Up Tony owned two houses, including a holiday home in Spain, and in the last show, 63 Up, he and Debbie had settled in the countryside. 

Tony’s later dream of becoming an actor saw him achieve modest success, with small extra parts – usually playing a cabbie – in The Bill and EastEnders.  

Charles Furneaux

Charles, one of three well-to-do boys followed from a Kensington prep school, participated in the first three Up documentaries before cutting ties with the project. 

He wanted to attend Oxford, but declared in 21 Up that he was glad to have avoided the ‘prep school–Marlborough–Oxbridge conveyor belt’ by going to Durham University instead.

Charles later attended Oxford as a post-graduate student and went on to pursue a career in journalism. He declined to take part in 28 Up; Apted previously admitted he ‘went beserk’ during a subsequent phone call which ruined their relationship to the point where Charles attempted to force Granada to remove archive images of him from the films in which he did not appear.

Ironically he now makes documentaries of his own, most successfully as a producer of ‘Touching the Void’. 

Andrew Brackfield

Andrew was one of Charles’ prep-school classmates, though unlike his disenchanted friend, he has appeared in every single Up documentary.

He famously claimed he read the Financial Times when he was seven – though later revealed he was repeating what his father told him to say – and went on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge. 

He subsequently became a solicitor, married Jane and had two sons. Andrew has previously admitted appearing in the programme every seven years is ‘not something I look forward to’.  

In ’56 Up’ Andrew’s wife Jane talks of wanting a career after raising their boys. 

John Brisby QC     

John is the third of the Kensington prep school trio, and has subsequently taken issue with his portrayal in the documentaries. In 56 Up, he criticised Apted’s decision to originally portray him as part of the ‘privileged upper class’.

‘I think that the premise on which the programme was based, namely that England was still in the grips of a Dickensian class system, was outmoded even in 1964,’ he told PBS.

‘It didn’t reflect realities in 1964. In so far as the programme touches me I think it’s a complete fraud; it all appeared part of some indestructable birth right. 

‘What viewers were never told is that my father died when I was age nine, leaving my mother in very uncomfortable financial circumstances, she had to go out to work to see us through school and I got a scholarship to Oxford.’

John has nevertheless appeared in all the Up shows bar two, 28 Up and 42 Up. He became a barrister and married Claire, the daughter of Sir Donald Logan, a former ambassador to Bulgaria, where his mother was from.

He now devotes himself to charities related to the country, and hopes to reclaim family land there that had been nationalised. He is a great-great-grandson of the first Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Todor Burmov.

Brisby said in 35 Up that he only does the films to give more publicity to his chosen charities.  

Symon Basterfield 

Symon is the only mixed-race participant and was brought up in the same children’s home as fellow Up star Paul Kligerman.

He never got to know his black father, and had left the charity home to live with his white mother by the time of 7 Plus Seven. Her struggles with depression were alluded to as the reason why he had been living in the home.

Symon dreamed of becoming an actor, and by 28 he was married with five children. However, by 35 Up he was going through a divorce and opted not to take part in that documentary. 

By 42 Up, Symon had married Vienetta, who had a daughter, and they had a son together. He revealed in 49 Up that he and his wife had decided to train as foster parents.

In 56 Up he spoke of his regret over his lack of a formal education, which he feels limited his income, and talked about his six children and his job as a forklift truck driver. In 63 Up he told how his relationship with his children from his first marriage is improving and he is a proud grandfather-of-10.   

Paul Kligerman 

Paul, who lived in a children’s home at the age of seven after his parents divorced and he remained with his father, had dreams of becoming a policeman, but worried it would be too hard. 

Soon after 7 Up, his father and stepmother moved the family to Australia. He has remained in the Melbourne area every since, and was seen in 21 Up with long hair and a girlfriend called Sue, whom he later married. By 28 Up, the couple had two children.

Paul found employment as a bricklayer and went on to set up his own business. By 49 Up, he worked for a sign-making company while he and Sue had two grandchildren. Their daughter Katy was the first member of their family to go to university.

By 56 Up Paul had started work at a local retirement village, doing odd jobs and maintenance of the small units and gardens. He was reunited with Symon in 21 Up, 49 Up and 63 Up.

Suzanne ‘Suzy’ Lusk

Suzy comes from a wealthy family and was first seen while attending an independent London day school. Her parents divorced around the time of 7 Plus Seven and she dropped out of school at 16, choosing to travel to Paris.

She appeared to have developed a negative opinion towards marriage and parenthood in 21 Up, but by 28 Up she had a husband, Rupert Dewey, and two sons, and admitted her marriage brought her optimism and happiness.

Suzy became a bereavement counsellor whole Rupert is a solicitor in Bath. They went on to have a daughter. 

She has always expressed moderate disdain for the project, branding it ‘pointless and silly’ in 7 Plus Seven and 21 Up, while she swore she wouldn’t take part again after 49 Up, but did appear in 56 Up out of ‘obligation’. 

She finally made good on her promise when it came to 63 Up; she refused to take part and Apted resorted to borrowing a phone and ringing her, ‘so she’d think it was someone else’. When he revealed it was him, she put the phone down.