When a Yorkshire-born scientist I’d never met died last year, I grieved as though I knew him, which I did in a way. Nick Hitchon had been part of my life since he appeared on television aged six, saying he wanted to learn about the moon.
Nick made his TV debut in 1964 but I didn’t see it until the early 1980s, when my east London comprehensive school showed us the first two episodes of Seven Up!, a television series that has charted 14 British lives every seven years since. It emerged as the clear winner of a Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG) poll of the most influential British TV programmes over the past 50 years. Nick last appeared on 63 Up in 2019, talking as perceptively as ever about his throat cancer and his life.
