A Very English Education

It matters to me very much,

that you people should be able to look someone in the eye,

and smile, and say, "Good morning," or, "Good afternoon."

A boys' boarding school is a particularly British institution,

envied and copied the world over.

It matters to me

that you should not speak to people with your hands in your pockets.

In 1979, the BBC made a series following life in one of these

elite boys' public schools, Radley College.

It matters to me that you've got polished shoes,

and I wonder how many of you have clean fingernails?

More than 30 years on, we track down some of the boys who appeared,

to find out what sort of men they became.

These tiny little things make something that last, because

you come to school for one thing, to acquire the right habits for life.

Ah, Donald. Congratulations!

You've won the top scholarship at Radley. Top?

Top, yes. Now, I think that probably calls for some kind of celebration,

so I'm not going to let you have more than a glass of cider,

because you've got a hockey match tomorrow.

Give you that much.

I knew I was bright from the age of about ten,

and so I did the scholarship exam to get into Radley,

and that's what you see in the TV series.

And to be told I'd got the top scholarship, I was delighted.

Dad? ON PHONE: Hello, my lad.

You know that I've won this top scholarship.

Oh, darling! I have, yeah.

The top scholarship? Yep.

To Radley? Yep. Full fees.

My father was a doctor, so my parents could have afforded it,

but this would have been amazing.

It meant school was free, apart from laundry.

DAD ON PHONE: Oh, many congratulations!

As a result of that, you're not marked, but you're

identified as the top scholar, so you're expected to achieve.

It's kind of, "Well, Donald'll do it, no problem."

And, I tell you, it wasn't no problem.

BELL RINGS LOUDLY

The boys featured began at Radley at the age of 13,

but most had already boarded at prep school from the age of eight.

ORIGINAL VOICEOVER: JMH Lovegrove

is one of this term's crop of stigs, or new boys.

He's about to take up residence in his new home, C Social.

As to why they decided to send me to boarding school,

I have no idea, other than that was probably what you did with

your children in that day and age, and in our social milieu.

And this is Nick Dean...

VOICEOVER: Social life in the social begins with a new boys' tea party,

an occasion for parents to meet those who will be in loco parentis.

It seems a strange thing to do, with hindsight, to your child,

to send them away for so long, but you wouldn't do it, you know,

because you hated them. Well, you might.

But mostly you do it because you love them

and you want them to do the best that they possibly can.

James isn't very much for societies at all.

Oh, well, that's all right. Does he row?

Yes. Oh, excellent! Excellent!

THEY ALL LAUGH

There are only two sorts of people,

those who row and those who play cricket.

I had boarded from the age of six, but that was in the war.

INTERVIEWER: How did you find boarding?

Oh, it was awful. I hated it until I was about 14.

And by that time I'd been to... That was my third school, actually.

So you felt you could share the experience with your own children. SHE LAUGHS

Would you like to go in there

and see if you can see your name anywhere?

Right, because of what?

SHE LAUGHS

I think leaving a mother for any child is the hardest part

of going away anywhere, let alone to a school

where you're going to spend two-thirds of your year.

That, I think, was a wrench.

I would much rather have been at home.

We're not a very touchy-feely, expressive family, so it was a nice,

polite, formal peck on the cheek, "Goodbye," and then she's off.

VOICEOVER: Radley College is five miles from Oxford, houses 600 boys

and charges nearly ?3,000 a year for board and tuition.

So it's safe to assume that few Radleians

are of lowly social origins.

Just about every single person here, wanks the whole...

Well, not the whole time, but everybody wanks.

Speak for yourself! Exactly, yeah.

Everybody wanks here.

Nobody really has any qualms about talking about it,

"I had a wank last night," or whatever.

"Shattered this morning."

"You shouldn't have had a wank last night," sort of idea.

I became famous. Apparently I said it a number of times.

I did say it a number of times,

but my point about saying it within the interview was...

INTERVIEWER: Saying what?

Saying, "wank". Saying that boys...

I think... I haven't seen this for 35 years,

so I think I said, you know,

"People talk about wanking here like they talk about bread and butter."

We were down the South of France. Definitely was, yeah.

There's the boat.

It was considered a huge yacht at the time. Well, it was 149 ft.

We had 13 people, and 14 crew. Oh, look at me, wasn't I gorgeous?

HE LAUGHS

Yes. Yes, Mummy, yes, Mummy.

My mother came from a very poor background, grew up in New York

during the depression, so I know that she had it quite tough.

She married an Englishman, a commodity broker.

There you go.

We grew up in a very idyllic situation.

There was a big house and lovely holidays.

This is the house.

Paige is here...

..with this big collar. I still have that dress downstairs.

It was not a physically affectionate household.

My parents were involved in their own world,

so from a child's perspective, I didn't feel that closeness.

INTERVIEWER: Why did you decide

to send the children off to boarding school?

Well, it's a cultural thing, I think, you know?

Everybody that we knew's children were away at school.

And my secretary and our gardeners

and people like that, they sent their kids to the local schools.

INTERVIEWER: So it was a class thing?

Yeah, it was... It was a class thing, absolutely.

It's a club.

And when someone knows that you've gone to such and such a school,

that makes you all right.

There were some people who clearly came from very well-off backgrounds,

and you just needed to look at the cars turning up

at the beginning of term to see, yes, there's a fair bit of cash here.

You sort of scanned their addresses, Paris, Monaco, Hong Kong,

you know, Chelsea and, you know, I was North Shields.

I was born close to Newcastle, so I'm a Geordie at heart.

I was one of five kids.

My father was a vicar.

And we were moving around quite a bit and, you know,

my parents had made a lot of sacrifices to send me to Radley.

My first memories of school, I suppose,

were of Priory School in Tynemouth.

It came to the end of my first year in the junior school.

The form master was sort of talking to everybody in the class

about how next term they'd all be going up to the second form,

and he said, "But Timothy's going away to boarding school.

"And he's quite unlucky."

And I remember thinking, "Ooh, hang on.

"This isn't quite how I thought it was going to be."

I think there was a degree of fear, you know?

You're going into the unknown. There is nothing familiar.

This is David Roper-Curzon, Salisbury Cathedral.

Stick your things on the piano there, David.

What do you want to do first? Um... Flute?

Play the flute first.

PLAYS TRADITIONAL TUNE

VOICEOVER: In the lee of Salisbury Cathedral is the choir school,

where the Honourable David Roper-Curzon is a chorister.

And across the Cathedral Close is David's home.

He is the eldest son of Lord Teynham,

and he will ultimately be the 21st to succeed to that title.

INTERVIEWER: What sort of family were you from?

Chaotic, really, as far as I can remember.

How many children did your parents have?

Eventually ended up with ten. Five boys, five girls.

I'm the eldest.

Hello? Yeah, we've got the... Hello.

We've got the BBC here. There we are. Oh, marvellous.

You look like Mrs Ambridge.

I've bought your mail. Oh, my God!

INTERVIEWER: Your father being a Lord, were you a very rich family?

No. No, no, not at all.

No, not at all.

I mean, I think, maybe it was obviously luckier than some.

But there's me there in the army, in Bermuda actually.

And then that's me and the Queen, shaking hands.

My father never really had any money,

and neither did his father for that matter.

But, you know, he's the 20th in succession,

so it goes right back to 1613, or something like that.

I think, I suppose the first one had a bit of money,

but then all the rest of them were pretty useless and lost it, I think.

HE LAUGHS

INTERVIEWER: Were finances an issue for you? Was it easy to send...?

Of course. This whole point of getting in for a scholarship,

you get roughly half the school bill paid.

It's the only reason why I could go there,

was I had a scholarship. What?

I was telling them earlier, the only reason you could afford to send me

there was because I got a scholarship.

Of course, it made all the difference. With ten children,

you've got to find the money somewhere or go to a state school.

As is the case of... Most people who've been to public school

themselves, they see that system as something

they want for their children as well, and I suppose it was

sort of tradition, really, more than anything else.

Did he have a particular aim in mind, do you think, for you,

of what you might become or what you might do in life?

Oh, I'm sure he had all sorts of plans,

but they didn't turn out the way he'd necessarily have planned them.

You're a stig, by the way. I don't know if you knew.

No, I didn't.

Well, that's the name for a new boy.

May I begin by saying how very glad I am to have you here at Radley.

I want you people to build up one habit.

The habit of work.

Right, everybody here?

The first thing you do is to stand up, I may as well tell you.

Come along, you vile boy!

This is your very first period at Radley College,

one of England's greatest public schools, and you're late. Sit down.

My first form teacher was Mr Goldsmith.

Luckily, I only had him for a term,

because he scared the shit out of me.

Lovegrove.

GMH and CCHR.

I just wasn't expecting this full force gale that hit us

in that first year.

Right, number one.

Alpha numbers. Right, that one again. One.

Every Saturday morning there would be a Saturday morning mental, which,

basically, was a sort of general knowledge test cum maths quiz.

Eight.

Two. Two.

Two! So he would just throw numbers at you,

random numbers and you had to keep adding them up, adding them up.

Eight. Eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight. That's all.

I don't know why they gave him

to a bunch of new boys as their form master.

It does seem a bit of a trial by fire.

Maybe that was the point? Maybe that was the point.

This is a code to be cracked.

The answer is QPR v Ipswich.

He was quite an eccentric teacher, but he made you learn.

Now, I'd always found maths easy, but I think he recognised who

was good at maths, and he would push you.

No! You've got to have it written down, you infernal boy!

There were certain boys who'd want to be top. I was one of them.

Therefore, if you think you're in the top two or three,

and you come fifth, that's motivation enough to work harder.

Everybody know exactly what's expected of them? Right-oh.

Good luck. Now you may go.

Academic excellence was something they strove for

and pushed you quite hard towards.

But sporting prowess was very, very highly valued indeed.

If you were a sporting, you know, legend,

you would be in the hall of fame for all time.

Were you a sporting legend? No.

So, who was in the hall of fame in your year?

Oh, well...

Donald Payne was actually a great all-rounder.

He was very smart

and he was a good sportsman on almost every...in every game.

Bastard!

What sort of boy were you?

Really loud.

Loud, busy, noisy, but underneath it, very shy.

I was in the first team for rugby, I was in the first team for hockey.

I just think, amongst your peers, in your year group,

if you're in the first team for something, people looked up to you.

You're going to be good at something

which was going to make your life easier, then be good at sport,

and then you would be given a sort of a relatively easy ride.

Anyway, let's change the subject slightly. Let's talk about women.

What? Women.

What? Who?

Oh, sorry.

You haven't got any here.

No. Well, only in the biology books, and...

LAUGHTER

You don't know how to deal with girls or with women, and

I think that we idealised them, and, at the same time, we have absolutely

no context for communicating with them or dealing with them

or understanding them, and preparing us for the rest of our lives.

The school chaplain decided to have Scottish dancing classes.

And of course, we joined straightaway, not because we had any desire

to do reels, but we thought, opportunity to meet women.

There were the sort of bunch for whom probably

the highlight of the term would be the sort of school dances.

People like?

Oh, well, Paige Newmark, the school stud.

We used to get instructions before these dances about how to behave.

Both hands must be visible at all times.

Why was that?

Well, so you're not inside girls' shirts,

or your hands down their whatever.

Remaining in the vertical position at all times.

In other words, no lying down.

And always have one foot on the ground.

And how did you deal with the dances? Were you successful?

I didn't really go to them. I was quite shy.

Well, if you ended up going to it,

you'd probably end up standing at the bar, talking to your mates.

Oh, Tim Huxley.

Yeah, Tim was always a bit... I remember him

as being sort of slightly awkward.

He had a regional accent. Was it a Yorkshire accent?

Which, again, made him, you know, in terms of the sort of pecking order

of school, would certainly put him down the list.

I wouldn't describe it as tribal,

but you certainly sort of divide yourself up.

And you walk into the dining hall at Radley,

and, you know, there'll be tables of, you know, yeah, the cool dudes.

I must confess, I haven't worked over hard,

although, I mean, this last week, I mean, since half term,

I have been actually pulling my finger out rather a lot.

20 to. OK, get up.

Rupert Gather is hoping to get into Oxford.

I rather sort of fancy myself as the cultured intellectual,

although I'm not particularly intellectual.

I want to get to Oxford, OK?

I want to go to Balliol. And it's really tough.

I mean, Balliol's meant to be sort of the ivory tower of the colleges.

You know, I mean, I couldn't face the thought of being stuck

away somewhere in Rotherham, you know?

I think, I guess the hardest bit about self-confidence is that

there's a very thin line between self-confidence and arrogance.

Rupert was incredibly gregarious, outgoing person.

And he was so annoyingly intelligent, he made it look easy.

Which I found really irritating because I really had to struggle.

I had a lot of trouble last year, you know, with one thing

and another, and, you know, I nearly got seen to station, sort of thing.

It's obviously much more hierarchical than a mixed environment would be.

But to survive, everyone develops their own strategies.

Mine involved, sort of, I think, quite a lot of humour

and joie de vivre, as the teachers might have said.

Rupert, full of good will, good heart,

but not always with the stamina to see something through to the end.

And just how much work he has really done I wouldn't be prepared to say,

and I think that might become exposed in an Oxbridge interview.

I wanted to go to Oxford, but I needed a good warden's report,

and I recognised that I had a bumpy road through the school,

and therefore I needed to do something exceptional.

Noted that the library was completely unloved,

and so I said, you know, "We can do something about this."

I mean, frankly, I've got a lot to gain,

I mean, in a mercenary way, if I really butter him up.

Bye. Rupert, what can I do?

Sir, I just brought some proposals about the library.

I don't know if anyone else mentioned anything about it.

He has, actually. Let me just...

I mean, did it work? Did the warden give you a good report?

I have no idea whether the warden gave me a good report.

If I asked him he probably wouldn't tell me. I don't know.

But was I confident that he would give me a good report?

Yes, I was.

I think I agree with just about everything in here.

Anything that could, as you say here, revitalise the library,

must be a good thing. Yeah.

Where did that confidence come from?

Was that something that school had given you?

Or was it something you had had already?

I think the schooling process gives you confidence,

and, obviously, family background and parents.

I think it's probably innate, actually,

I'm not even sure you learn it, do you? I don't know.

This is Tim Huxley for the Workers Revolutionary Party.

CHEERING

Seasoned comrades!

Britain has seen the major political parties

and our political system as a whole drag it down for years.

When, fine, OK, I was secretary of the Debating Society,

and so somebody has to put the extreme left-wing view.

But certainly at the time I thought there's something

not quite just here.

A lot of people seem to have a sense of entitlement.

The time is ripe for revolution!

CHANTING: Shut up!

But you wanted to shake things up a bit?

I wanted to make people more aware of what the rest of the world was.

There was the time of the miners' strike.

There was a time when the shipyards were closing in the North East.

We were living in a pretty rough part of Newcastle, and you'd sort of

watch the regional news, and it'd be about people losing their jobs.

When I went away to Radley at the beginning of each term, I mean,

you know, I was leaving behind this very different environment.

This is St John's Vicarage, which was my home

I used to come back home to from Radley,

when my father was vicar of St John's Church in Percy Main.

A vicarage is very much a working house.

You've always got people coming in, going out.

It was a very happy place to be, actually.

Were you a close family?

Oh, very. I think we all looked after each other.

First term at Radley didn't go very well, really.

I do remember when my school report that December came through and

Dennis wrote, "Coming bottom of the bottom form is not a very

"auspicious start to his Radley career."

I remember sitting there with my father and we talked about this.

Obviously he wasn't very happy,

and I certainly felt I had let people down.

So I went back there to justify the investment they made in me

but also to prove something to myself.

That I could be competitive with all these other people there.

Going away to boarding school was pretty grim in many respects,

cos you're exposed all the time.

You're not going home to Mum every night.

You deal with it by building up a camaraderie with

the people around you, but at the same time,

more than anything, I think you actually become quite defensive.

You can't show your weaknesses.

And you do sort of shut down certain aspects of your emotions and feelings.

You're less open. You don't show emotion.

I don't show emotion. People still criticise me of that today.

Really?

Why don't you show emotion if you're in a place like that?

Cos it's a sign of weakness.

What would happen if you show weakness?

I suppose somebody might exploit it.

Cos I was the top scholar,

there's always an expectation that you will do well.

For the first few years that was fine, but with each passing year,

keeping up that standard became harder and harder.

And it was also not just academically,

because it also happened in the sporting area as well,

cos in addition to the academic stuff,

I was also doing very well at sport, particularly athletics.

So, again, there was another pressure on top of that,

cos I was winning races, supposedly without any effort.

And then with each passing year, everyone goes, "Oh, yeah.

"Who's running? Oh, Donald's running. Of course, he'll win."

And it just gets harder and harder.

I was just so desperate to do well, and therefore pushing myself.

Everything became a huge effort,

and I'm not the sort of person that would have mentioned that to anyone,

so it would have all have stayed inside.

One of the things I noticed is I was drifting off in lessons.

I could sit in a lesson and 20 minutes would go by,

and I'd suddenly go, "Ooh, what have I missed?"

I became a bit obsessive compulsive, I think, where we

were doing rugby training, and I was playing fly-half,

and the fly-half stands behind the scrum, and there came a point

where I couldn't walk past anything at school without imagining,

"Oh, the corner of that building's the scrum, so where would I stand?"

So I would go from one classroom to the next,

a journey which would take a minute, and I would take five minutes,

cos every time I walked past a tree or a building or a bin,

I'd have to line myself up against that bin.

It's frightening to think about that now.

And, again, I was terrified of telling anyone that.

Did you? No. Did your parents know how you were feeling?

No.

They knew I was withdrawn, and they knew, I think,

they remember saying, "You haven't said anything for about a year."

Can you all move rather quickly, please? Can you all hurry up?

I'd always been quite a polite, reserved child, ready to sort of

fit in and try and be helpful, but I've never been a great joiner-in.

What? Sorry, but, yeah.

I had always been into sort of science fiction, fantasy,

comics, the esoteric stuff,

but at Radley you weren't allowed comics and, you know, anything

that wasn't really proper mainstream stuff wasn't really approved of.

Good night, everybody. See you all tomorrow.

It was a sort of, you know,

it was something you had to keep to yourself a bit.

These are very scurrilous comics and magazines I drew.

They'd get passed around the dormitory at night.

I probably just kept them in my desk. No-one would have checked.

You can see what kind of level of humour we're dealing with here.

The title is C-Men.

I would just make jokes about teachers and pupils and...

Oh, yes, that was when the housemaster's dog got caught being pleasured by another teacher's dog.

This is someone doing horrible things to various members of staff.

It was probably quite a useful escape valve.

It was something that you could enjoy without thinking that it

was connected to the school, so it was a sort of way out.

It's something that was a reminder of home, because I could do that

sort of stuff at home without, you know, getting into trouble.

You're the people who are the leaders of the music.

You're the chiefs, if you like. The others are the Indians.

You'll probably find the Indians are very keen, but they're

looking to the music scholars to give them a lead and set an example.

And is that what happened?

No, not really. Not in my case, anyway.

I like to think I had tried as hard as I could

but I dare say I was a bit lazy on occasions.

My school reports often ended, "Could have done better," kind of thing,

so I think academically speaking,

I wasn't certainly a high achiever.

I got to a stage, I suppose, when I was about 16.

I got fed up being told what to do all the time, I suppose, and so I left.

Yeah. And then went to the Salisbury Tech.

That must have not been that usual amongst your Radley contemporaries?

No, I mean, there was hardly anybody did that, but that was just me.

Mmm.

Were you disappointed when he left Radley after all that money?

Oh, yes, I was, because, you know, one went to a lot of trouble to send him there.

I can't remember now what happened. He probably...

I refused to go back. Do you remember? Yeah, well, oh, yes. Yeah.

Well, after that you went in the army, didn't you?

Mmm. That was a disaster, really.

That didn't work out.

Well, it was just terrifying, I remember that.

And jolly hard work, yeah.

I'd never worked so hard in my life.

How long did he last in the army? Do you remember?

Well, it was about two or three months, wasn't it? Yeah.

Yes. Very little time. Yeah.

VOICEOVER: Paige Newmark cuts a dash by driving in from a weekend at home

with his sister and girlfriend Anthea in his own car.

It's strictly against school rules.

Living in a large institution like that,

you're ruled every moment of the day.

You know, you get up at a certain time, you're down to breakfast

at a certain time, you have to wear your uniform in a particular way.

And I was constantly questioning that.

"WHY do we have to do this?" "Well, that's just the way it is."

Yeah, I was challenging to authority.

Now, Paige, I have it on fairly good authority,

that you've arrived in style...

in your own car, which has not been done in my time here,

ever, by any other boy.

And just strolled into our dance, as calm as you please.

And now you plan to drive home.

I'm sorry, sir, but...

I mean, you just haven't got a case.

I think I have and I think I've got it rather clearer than you.

You haven't! And I m going to put you in my car

and I'll take you straight home now, and Paige, your tutor's

expecting you and you can go off to your cubicle right away.

I was demoted from being a prefect.

I suppose society just runs smoother if people toe the line.

Will you please go in.

A-levels are designed to be quite testing exams.

I knew it was on a knife-edge.

And I sort of suspected that I had one shot at this.

If I didn't do English at Oxford,

then I would have to sort of re-appraise the whole thing.

You suddenly realise where some of the gaps are.

I just couldn't suss that out in here.

Not a BLEEP.

You know, on a different day, it could've gone a different way.

That's presumably A A E, is it?

That's right.

Mixed blessings.

Oh, dear. I didn't get the English S-level at all.

Didn't you? Which isn't very impressive, in fact,

especially for Oxbridge.

I mean, I'll be definitely going...

So, I didn't get into Oxford, which was a shame.

So I slipped into the next phase of my life.

A couple of my friends said, "Where's your spark gone?

"You used to be really sparky."

And there was that love of life, which sort of just went.

And it all came to a head in my final summer term,

when we had A-levels, and I started to lose races.

Or I started to win them, but at such a cost that

I... I got physically scared that I might lose a race.

And then there was a race I ran where a guy I'd raced before

and beaten quite easily,

we ran again, and he was in the lead with about 50 metres to go,

and I ran, and I beat him.

And I remember running across the finish line and going...

I remember, I sort of said out loud,

"I don't care whether I won or lost."

Well, I just sort of lost that drive.

Life being such an effort. Um...

I think that the public school experience does prepare one well

for later life.

And the old boy network is certainly about getting ahead,

and it does help certain people.

What it does do is give you that opportunity to forge ahead,

make money, get a good position in a company and a career.

I was unable to play that game.

I was looking for something else.

I was looking for a more personal gratification.

Something to do with people.

Yeah, just tell the actors I'll be up in about five minutes.

OK. No worries. Thanks.

So, now I'm a theatre director, living in Western Australia,

running a Shakespeare company.

Now, I'm giving the cast notes.

You know what we've rehearsed, you know what to do.

Don't reach for a laugh when it's not there,

but keep in the action of the piece.

Enjoy your show.

And have you made money in your chosen profession? No.

No, I very much see myself as the black sheep of the family

in that regard.

Yeah, theatre is not a lucrative business, sadly.

Here comes Beatrice.

By this day, she's a fair lady.

LAUGHTER

In the film in the series...

Mmm. ...you're like the school stud.

And did you go on then and have loads of relationships with women?

And how did that all pan out? No. Um... I wish!

I remember leaving and going up to university

and I was an undergrad up at York and there was a glass door

and I held it open for a woman, a girl to come the other way.

And she wouldn't walk through it.

Cos I'd held the door open for her she thought it was me being male

and patronising, and I'd grown up with that as simple manners.

You know, it sort of comes down to that tension between manners

for life, which we were given,

but not having any realistic mode of communication with females.

Have you always gone for a certain type of woman?

I'm probably about as deep as a puddle in the sense that

I do like attractive women.

I've been lucky to have some very attractive girlfriends.

Wives?

And my wife is very beautiful, too.

Yeah, only one wife.

As I've always wanted to be a parent, I've always thought

I would be a good parent, and now I have children,

I truly believe that I am a good father,

because I'm able to give my children much more

in the emotional sense,

than my parents gave me, you know, kissing,

hugging, holding hands,

all those things that I didn't grow up with.

It's Teresa's first day of kindergarten tomorrow.

How do you feel about her starting her first little school?

A little bit emotional.

It's the beginning of letting her go.

I've always been glad that I followed my heart,

but now that I'm getting older and I've got two young children

they won't have the privilege of a private education

cos I can't afford it.

"The Prince took charge. Stand fast.

"Secure the rigging and without warning..."

I think it's interesting because, to my parents, being a good parent

was getting a great education, sending us to a good school.

Weirdly enough, I'm not able to do those things,

so in their terms, I would not be a good parent.

It's just about choices, really.

I love you.

Well, when I left Radley, I decided, "Right, I am going to have a job

"by the time I have finished at university."

And I applied to everybody.

I just wanted to get a job.

When I was in the midst of doing all of these job applications,

this notice went up on the Edinburgh University careers notice board,

saying, "No specific degree required,

"just entrepreneurial flair and willingness to travel."

Well, this is the headquarters of

Wah Kwong Maritime Transport Holdings Ltd,

one of Hong Kong's largest, privately owned ship owners.

I'm the CEO of this company, so, at the end of the day,

the buck stops with me.

It's been my home for 24 years.

Virtually everybody here is from either Hong Kong or China.

I'm the only Brit working here.

Do you speak Cantonese?

I can order a drink and I can get home in a taxi, but that's about it.

TV: Seasoned comrades!

Britain has seen the major political parties...

This is many, many years ago,

in a land far, far away,

when I was very young.

When you think of socialist Tim. What happened to him?

Well, when I left Radley I sort of had these wonderful dreams

of being a journalist...

..and maybe even possibly changing the world a bit,

but it's funny how, for a profession that is so competitive to get into,

the remuneration is so awful.

Is your industry well paid?

I'm better off than if I'd been a journalist.

'Yeah, I have done very well out of it.

'I am comfortably off, that's for sure.'

..let's do the naming then.

Let's not give them any more bad news before Chinese new year...

'The most important thing

'that you come out of a school like Radley with is the template

'for you to build on the set of values...

'..and good manners, which are great things to have,'

cos they cost you nothing.

And they do actually...

They get you into places.

You work hard here. In Hong Kong, it never stops.

You might leave work, and you might then have two or three

business appointments in the evening.

My only rule here is that I always try to ensure that I'm in a taxi,

going home before midnight.

Boarding school makes you very independent.

I mean, I've lived on my own for 30 years, you know, not sharing

a flat or anything, and I, yes, I think I can look after myself.

Can you look after yourself a bit too well?

Um... To let anyone else in?

Maybe.

When I came to Hong Kong, I was 28 years old,

and I do remember then starting to put away money every month

for school fees, specifically for school fees.

Um...

Well, I never got married, so, you know, that hasn't been spent.

Has that been a sadness to you, though?

Yeah. I believe, when I left Radley, I thought that what you did

when you... Well, I thought that what I would do

was I'd go and get a good job in the UK,

and have a couple of boys, and I'd send them to Radley.

I thought that would happen.

Wasn't the only thing in my life,

but it was certainly something that I thought,

"OK, that is going to happen,

"and I should prepare for that eventuality."

And, OK, it didn't happen.

Tell me what you made of your Radley husband when you met him.

Well, it's not a shock,

I mean, I'd waitressed all the way through university.

I know lots of posh people, and I've got friends who are posh,

you know, it's not another world,

but I guess when he said he missed his swimming pool

it was a bit of a clue.

Can I help?

We lived in a council flat.

No-one you knew went to public school.

No-one went away to school, unless you went to Borstal.

Never mind. It'll all wash off...

He laughed out loud. I found that really disconcerting.

We'd go to the cinema, and something'd be funny,

and he'd really laugh.

I was, like, "Duck down, someone's going to hit you," you know?

There's just this sort of innate confidence.

He says, "Thank you," a lot, and he always opens doors.

That would all be too nice for me.

I'm not that nice. But he's got a really sick mind.

Asgard, it's the realm of the Norse Gods,

where Thor and Loki come from,

you see, and that's how they roll in Asgard...

Lou is polar opposite of my background.

Totally different, but we share a very similar sensibility,

a very similar sense of humour.

She's not into science fiction and stuff as much as I am,

but she tolerates my, you know, geeky affectations.

Oh, and this is where Thor comes in.

You'll like him, too, cos he's hunky as well.

So we have an amazing amount in common, and yet

we come from totally opposite ends of, you know, the world, as it were.

I'm a professional author. I write science fiction mostly.

I am now making a living as a writer. I um...

A good living? A reasonably good living.

It could be better, believe me.

Would you board your kids, Lou? Would I board my children?

No, is the short answer.

I don't want my children to live anywhere else but with me.

I can't bear the thought of them being away. I mean, they're tiny.

James went when he was seven, so that's in six months.

Eight. Eight? Eight, yeah. OK. So, in a year or so, he'd be gone.

Monty would be gone already.

You know, who's giving them hugs, who's giving them cuddles?

And if they are giving them cuddles, then I'd be really sad,

perversely, cos that should be my job.

You know, I understand the best education,

and I've heard that you can meet, you know, friends for life

and people that, you know, will be useful for you through life,

but I don't think any of that compensates for having

a really good home background,

for the emotional intelligence and security.

I don't know, you can be as rich as anything,

but unless you're happy, unless you've got people to love

and you know how to love them, and people to love you back, OK,

this is what I say to James, is, that's what makes you happy.

It's not how much money you've got.

No, it's my ice cream. You can't have it.

We've made our feelings pretty clear that our children

aren't going to boarding school and the reasons for it,

but, you know, it's not been a source of friction or whatever.

It's our decision, and I don't think you have a problem with it?

Absolutely none at all. And it's partly financial, obviously, but...

Not only financial. No, it's not partly financial.

If money were no object,

we would still not want them to go to a boarding school.

Mm.

So, in the world of public school connections,

has that brought you much?

No, no. Nothing, really.

No, it has been absolutely no advantage whatsoever,

and I don't think it defined my life.

I don't think being at a public school has made me what I am.

Do you think in a way public school might be giving the boys so much

confidence, the confidence to say, "The school didn't help me at all?"

Well, that would be the ultimate irony, wouldn't it?

When I left university, I joined the Army.

I liked the sense of camaraderie, I liked the sense of adventure

and excitement and risk.

I also felt it was right, giving something back to one's country,

and so I think I joined the Army for the right reasons.

It wasn't just because I couldn't think of anything else to do.

Er...

It wasn't to do with a love of all-male institutions,

before you ask.

After about, well, it was roughly ten years, I left the Army,

because I wanted some grounding in industry.

There was an advertisement in the Sunday Times, which I applied for.

I became a management trainee in a supermarket group.

Which one?

It was, well, it's now called Somerfield. It was called Gateway.

Gateway, at the time, was sitting quite at the bottom of the heap.

They were constantly lurching from one crisis to the next,

so it was a very challenging organisation to work for,

but for "challenging," read "exciting."

And for what I was trying to achieve, which was learning as much

as possible in the shortest space of time, it couldn't have been better.

I was a supermarket manager in Cirencester,

and we had eight holes in our roof, and every time it rained,

the rain came through the roof onto the bread fixture,

so I had to organise a line of shoppers -

and they didn't seem to mind -

to move the bread off the bread fixture to take it out of the way!

What did your friends from school think about you joining

Gateway Supermarket?

Astonished. I mean, my friends were astonished.

Everybody I knew was astonished.

But I was very lucky in so far as my regimental tie

looked really quite similar to the Gateway company tie,

so, in fact, I spent three years in my regimental tie and my suit.

So I kind of made it my own world.

I think I always knew I'd end up running my own company.

I didn't know when I started off

that I'd be running this kind of company.

So now I'm in investment banking.

Hi, George.

Good afternoon, sir.

I'm executive chairman of Claridge Capital Group.

We've got an office in Mayfair, and doing really well.

Quite a jump from Gateway in Cirencester, those days?

It's a journey.

If you've got that long-term view, and you start basically...

'Proposing investments to high network people,

'one needs to build people's confidence,

'you know, people trust people.'

I think Radley was not essential for what I'm doing now.

I think the kind of school probably was.

Do we know about China? They're all confirmed.

Generally speaking, the public school system

drags the best out of people, and hopefully,

the whole of the state system will do their very best

to learn from those schools rather than damn them,

because I think they're internationally acknowledged

as setting a benchmark of how a school should be.

Aren't those schools damned because it's just unfair?

And is it fair that so many people from one school can take so many

of the positions in life, and in power and business?

Um, I think it's an absolute indictment of the state schools.

I don't think that...

There's absolutely no reason at all

why the state system can't aspire to achieve

what the public schools do.

I think it's poverty of ambition.

Look, Archie, can you just keep one match?

Oh, hello. Hi.

This is Mel, my wife. Hi. Hello.

And this is Archie and Katrina and Dougal.

Archie, try not to be a moron. Come on.

Where are we? What's your place called?

The house? This is Pylewell Park, it's called.

How many rooms?

Oh, gosh. I haven't even counted.

It's about...15 bedrooms, is it? Something like that. Yeah.

Did you always know you'd end up here?

No, I never knew I was going to end up here definitely, at all.

No. Was it anything to do with going to Radley?

No, not really. No. No, no.

It was just one of those quirks of fate, I suppose.

My great uncle lived here before, didn't have any children,

so it went to my father.

Well, he still owns it all.

I'm merely...effectively a tenant.

But you've booted him out?

That's what he might think. I didn't boot him out.

No, it was a mutual decision.

Since they did the rewiring,

I've had a quote done to re-carpet along the corridor.

Yeah, that was going to cost a lot of money.

So you must let me know what's going on. Yeah, well, yeah.

I need to know what's happening.

So this is where I work. Excuse the mess.

These are portrait heads, so these will,

when I've finished the modelling, they will be cast in bronze.

There's one over there which I've just recently finished.

He's in the private equity business.

And this is one I'm working on at the moment.

I'm never going to make it rich being a sculptor,

but, you know, it's a living.

You can get by on it.

So this is the drawing room.

If you notice carefully, a lot of the furniture is in a bit of...

need of restoration, to say the least.

Is it expensive to live in a place like this?

How do you afford it?

Good question. I sometimes think we can't afford it,

but we somehow manage to scrape by.

The only way you can do it is just redecorating rooms as and when we can.

And who's doing them?

Mel's doing it all. Quite a lot of it.

Yeah. Up and down ladders all day.

How old is Archie now?

Eight.

Same age as you were when you went to school.

Pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Archie, you're going to a new school, aren't you, in September?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And what's it called? Ludgrove.

Ludgrove. There you are.

What sort of school?

It's a prep school, a boarding school.

And, yeah, no, I think he's keen to move on, but, you know,

rather like me, as I was that age,

he doesn't know what it's going to be about.

So what do you think about going to Ludgrove?

I think I want to go to it.

But why?

I don't know. I just want to go.

Yeah. Well, there you are.

I come back every two weeks.

That's true, yeah.

Yeah, we're both a bit anxious about it, because, you know,

he's not going to be with us here and we're going to miss him.

But on the other hand, you know, it's progressive.

He has to move on.

You know, he's a bit of a live wire, as you can see him,

and I think, you know, all the sports and everything

that it's got to offer will be a good thing.

And, you know, he will flourish.

Dougie! Come on, Dougie.

Hi.

Hello. Come in.

So, here we are in Perth, WA, Western Australia, in our house.

You've got the sitting room in there,

couple of bedrooms behind you. Hm.

Boys' bedrooms either side here. One each.

And then this is where we spend most of our time.

So, kitchen and living area. A few children to introduce.

Hi! Hi.

This is Freddy, Izzy and Arthur.

Hello. And just hanging out.

And out here, let me show you the veranda and the garden.

So, as you can see, we're all set up for back yard cricket here.

Bit of extra sporting equipment behind you.

So you're still sporty?

Yes. I mean, sport's what we do.

'So now I'm a doctor.

'I'm a paediatrician, and my main interest is in adolescent medicine.'

Karly, my name's Donald Payne.

'So primarily I work with teenagers.'

Hi, there.

I became really unwell and...

Yeah.

When did you make this? At home.

'And I think I have empathy.'

I know what it is like to struggle as a teenager.

In hindsight,

I would've probably been diagnosed with a sort of anxious depression.

And then I left school and it all sort of got better.

Ooh!

We were actually working together for quite a while.

It took quite a long time for him to ask me out.

But when we did, it was just really easy being together,

and I think it didn't take me long to realise then

that he was going to be the one.

You know, Donald certainly relates to adolescents having difficult times,

and I'm just thrilled because I can just hand over all our adolescent problems to him.

What are you doing? Maths?

Yeah, just maths.

My parents were great and they really gave me everything,

but they weren't as involved.

So, this line is going...

'If you're away for 36 weeks of the year, there's no way round that.

'My kids go to school locally, and I've always deliberately set out

'to try to be involved in what they do,'

and that's the way I prefer it.

And I think they probably prefer it.

'I want the kids to do really well.'

I want them to care, but I would never want them to get to the stage

where I got to, where it became almost all-consuming.

I look back, and that's what happened.

That's what happened to me.

It happened at Radley,

but I don't think it was anything much to do with Radley.

If you've got talent, people tend to push you, and some people

thrive on it, and some people really find it difficult.

How long is it since you were back here?

I'm going to say it's at least 20 years,

probably a bit longer.

Yeah.

Weird?

Hasn't changed. Hasn't changed at all.

It's quite amazing, actually, hasn't... I mean,

even the football nets, they were here.

Yeah, it could've been yesterday.

Does it feel like it could be yesterday?

Yeah. Well, not for me. I'm different.

But the place is exactly the same.

I'm just, yeah, I'm not at school.

I'm just visiting now.

How have you felt...?

About coming back? ..for the film?

Yeah, I think that the time that we spent

talking about it has been quite... fairly involved

and quite intense, but then I can leave it and move on.

It's a school.

I mean, in the end, it's just school.

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