What if the Seven Up! series started today? | Letter

In your editorial on the Up series (20 September), your point is well made that exposing seven‑year-olds on television today would expose them to dangers not encountered in the 60s. However, Seven Up! was made in the early part of 1964, not 1963 as you stated, and it was the brainchild of Tim Hewat, the producer of World in Action.

As he was leaving the series, the oversight was given to the Canadian director Paul Almond and, for our first jobs after passing through training, Michael Apted and I were given the task of finding the original 20 children (14 of whom were followed in subsequent films). The show was seen as a one‑off and it was only at the instigation of Denis Forman, then CEO of Granada TV, that the follow-up, 7 Plus Seven, was commissioned in 1969. I was too busy running the Stables Theatre Club to work on it, so Apted directed it alone.

There was no obligation on any of the participants to take part in any of the follow-up programmes and, as your editorial points out, some declined either partly or entirely. I have kept in touch with the 14 who made it through to 63 Up and, while some have complained of a socialist bias to the series, none have felt their lives impaired by taking part in it.

Indeed, as seen in Nick’s desire to be as famous as a scientist as he is from the series, or Tony being asked for a selfie instead of his taxi passenger, Buzz Aldrin, fame has had a pleasurable, even comic aspect. And the interaction between participants who would not otherwise have known each other has often been very positive.

Although Hewat’s intention was to show the inevitability of change beyond the age of seven and thus the inequality of society, our aim in the original search was to find interesting children. This was, of course, mediated by the decision to explore extremes – in income ranges and privilege as well as in urban/rural and north/south locations. But I feel it is certain that, were the series to be started today, the disparities between a similar selection of children would be even greater.
Gordon McDougall
Clevedon, Somerset