....even though he hasn't turned into a Tory....

www.timesonline.co.uk/art...10,00.html

Seven Up series charts revival of a down and out
Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

HIS ambition as a happy child was to be an astronaut or a coach driver if Nasa would not take him. But he had a series of breakdowns in his twenties and thirties, leading him at one point to live rough in a remote bothy in the Scottish Highlands.

Now in middle age, Neil Hughes, one of the stars of a television series that has tracked a group of Britons every seven years through their lives since 1964, has picked himself up.

The latest instalment of Seven Up now called 49 Up, after the age of its participants will be shown in two parts, starting next week.

It shows how Hughes has become a pillar of the local community in Cumbria, where he is a parish and district councillor and a lay preacher. He even stood as a Liberal Democrat at the general election in May. ...