He was seven years old, sitting in a children’s home in 1964, worried about one thing: greens. Not war, not poverty, not the divorce that had just split his family apart — greens.

That boy was Paul Kligerman, and the moment became one of the most beloved in British television history.

Paul was one of fourteen children chosen for a bold social experiment. Documentary makers picked kids from different corners of Britain’s class system, sat them down at age seven, and asked what they wanted from life. They planned to check back in every seven years. No one expected the project to still be running six decades later — or to end with cameras there for the finale, “70 Up,” premiering September 15, 2026, on ITV1.

A Childhood Spent Waiting for Answers

At seven, Paul lived in a children’s home after his parents’ marriage collapsed. He didn’t dwell on the hardship on camera. Instead, when asked about marriage one day, he worried a future wife might force him to eat vegetables he hated. It was a small, funny, deeply human moment — a child processing an uncertain world the only way he knew how.

Soon after, his father remarried and moved the family to Australia, where Paul has lived ever since, based in the Melbourne area.

The Years That Tested Him

Confidence didn’t come easily. By his early twenties, Paul admitted on camera that he had spent years believing he was a “no-hoper” — a label he said finally started to loosen its grip as life “fell into line.”

That shift proved lasting. He married his wife, Sue, built a life together, worked in trades before eventually taking on maintenance work at a retirement village, and settled into decades of stability few would have predicted from that anxious seven-year-old.

What We Know

Paul Kligerman first appeared in 1964’s original documentary at age seven, living in a children’s home.
He emigrated to Australia with his family and has remained in the Melbourne area since.
He married Sue and, according to production reports, they remain together after more than four decades.
The finale, “70 Up,” airs in two parts on ITV1 beginning September 15, 2026, directed by Asif Kapadia.
Original director Michael Apted, who guided the project for nearly 50 years, died in 2021; two other original participants, Lynn Johnson and Nick Hitchon, have also died.
Reportedly, Paul rebuilt a strained relationship with his mother over the years, aided by regular trips back to the UK for filming.

Why This Matters

This isn’t just nostalgia. The project that captured Paul as a boy was built on a stark premise: that a child’s social class at seven would predict the adult they became. Six decades later, participants like Paul complicate that theory — a boy from a children’s home who found stability, family, and, by his own account, peace.

For American audiences scrolling past headlines about inflation, instability, and uncertain futures for kids growing up today, Paul’s arc lands as something rarer than a viral moment: proof that early hardship doesn’t have to write the ending. It’s the same instinct behind the enduring popularity of long-term “where are they now” stories — audiences want evidence that a rough start doesn’t determine a rough life.

The series is ending now largely because time is: two of the original fourteen have already died, and every remaining participant will be 70 when the cameras stop rolling for good.

Paul went from a boy who couldn’t picture a wife without imagining forced vegetables, to a grandfather still married to the same woman decades later. As the cameras close on the longest-running documentary of its kind, his story stands as the quiet argument the whole project was built to test — that who we become is never fully written at seven.