I first came to work on Child of our Time in the spring of 1999. We had just been challenged by BBC ONE to find 25 children to be born at the dawn of the new millennium whom we could follow for a documentary series as they grew up. We knew we had to find families from all walks of life and from every corner of the British Isles. It was bound to be difficult, but in those early days we didn’t realise how very hard it would be – but nor did we realise what wonderful days we had in store for us as we got to know these amazing families.

We put out some adverts, looking for people who were expecting a baby in January 2000, and we also contacted lots of organisations who might be able to help us to find the people we wanted to meet. We spoke to hundreds of families who expected babies at the right time, and were delighted by some of their stories. I still wonder how some of them have got on since 1999. After a while we set off on the road, armed with little DV cameras, to meet and record some of the families we were particularly interested in persuading to come on board with us. I’ll never forget the day I went to meet the Baller family in Birmingham, who had me almost crying with laughter at their tale of how they never really meant to have more than two children, were delighted to have had a third, but were astonished to find that the fourth pregnancy was in fact triplets! I seem to remember that I laughed so much that the quality of my camerawork was very poor indeed – and this has happened to me on quite a few occasions with the Ballers since….

By the autumn of 1999 we had managed to convince the families to throw their lot – and that of their babies – in with us. We had a tense time as some of our babies were born well before they were due – Helena as early as September 1999 and Calvin in October. We began to understand that becoming involved with families as they faced the worst days of their lives was devastating for us all. We won’t forget waiting with the Youngs for some hope of Helena’s improvement, or being with them when they buried Helena’s brother and sister. All of the babies’ beginnings were moving, and we were honoured to have been able to film some of them. For me, these babies’ lives have been mixed in with those of my own children; I left my daughter’s first birthday party full of excitement, having been called to film the Langeveld twins’ birth. And at the end of a long night baby Alexander was stillborn while Charlotte survived. She – and her parents – will always be especially dear to me.

And so they were born – not exactly at the beginning of the millennium – but more or less on time. We only had one baby born on the first of January and I think I can still remember my millennium night hangover as I went to film Taliesin’s arrival. Never has a cup of tea been more welcome!

On the subject of cups of tea – how many have been drunk, I wonder, by Child of our Time teams round the country as we catch up on ‘our’ babies? We have had astonishing hospitality, generosity and so much fun with our families over the years. We’ve been on holiday with some families, larked about with brothers and sisters and of course done dozens of experiments on our hapless children. They hadn’t even been born when we started our work on them, playing ‘womb music’ to the little blighters (and we proved that they could still remember it a year later). They were scarcely out of the womb when we pressed on, hiding dollies under cloths to see if they remembered where they were; even cross-dressing them to see if parents played differently with a baby (not theirs) depending on whether they thought it was a boy or a girl. (They were quite different with boys). Working with such little children has certainly been an interesting experience – sometimes they love playing with our ‘toys’ and other times they just won’t cooperate. We just have to roll with the punches….

We’ve had great fun with the parents, too. I loved the mad experiment where we found things that the parents had not encountered since their own infancy - like a perfume not made since 1968, or powdered egg - and monitored their reactions when they were given them. We really felt that even if the science was a bit wacky, we were asking genuinely interesting questions.

When we have nearly finished making each year’s films, we take them around the country to show our families what we have seen of them in that year. Child of our Time is not like other programmes, where contributors have no say in the finished product. We are careful to involve our people in the making of our films, and we can and do make changes to them based on their feedback to us. We’ve had sad viewings where it has been very painful to re-live unhappy times, and many hilarious times as well.

A great deal has happened to the children in their five years – and to their parents too. We’ve been there to record all the highlights – and low points too. Being with every one of our children as they started school this year has been a treat for all of us, and we’ve felt enormously privileged to be so much part of our children’s lives. I know that, along with many viewers, I cheered when Emma was sworn in as a police officer after a really rocky few years. And we were so thrilled when Helena really began to blossom after her cruelly early start in life, and overjoyed when her parents finally gave her a sister this year. We hope we’ve been able to give our families some support in the bad times, but it hasn’t all been one-way: the concern and kindness I had from them in my own bad times has been wonderful, and I am really grateful. Many of us on the team are parents - and we’ve had a good few BBC team babies along the way. We’ve all benefited from the top tips we’ve gathered from our families, as well as from the science we’ve all learnt as we’ve been together. Child of our Time has – so far – been an amazing project, and I hope that as a team we’ll all continue to enjoy learning about each other for the fifteen years we have left.

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