Nicholas Hitchon: ‘I feel very privileged to have been part of this, but it’s come at a big cost’

Britain?s first glimpse of Nicholas Hitchon in Seven Up! was as a tiny boy in Wellington boots, striding confidently along a Yorkshire country lane. When we meet him again next month, in the eighth instalment of what has become a TV landmark, he?ll be 56 and back in the Dales. During that time Mr Hitchon has gone from his one-room Yorkshire village school, where he was keen to “find out about the moon and all that”, to Oxford University and a successful academic career in America. The last time we saw him in 49 Up, he was in the US working as a professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison?s electrical and computer engineering department and being interviewed with his second wife, Chryss.