Meet the jubilee babies

7 June 1977. Two British children are born, hundreds of miles apart. As their 25th birthdays approach, they talk to Julia Stuart about their views on the monarchy

There was a lot of fuss made over Lucy Tzouliadis when she was born. Her mother had been in hospital for several months, as Lucy was threatening to turn up early. When she did arrive – safely, though a month premature – there was cause for double celebration. The day was 7 June 1977. "Mum always said my birth was extra-special because it was silver jubilee day," Lucy remembers.

The local newspaper came to take photographs of Lucy and her mother, Patricia, and Boots sent a special christening-gown. Patricia and her husband, Vissarion, marked the occasion by choosing Elizabeth as one of Lucy's middle names and putting a birth notice in a national newspaper to announce that the occasion had fallen on silver jubilee day.

Meanwhile, in Madrid, another baby was born on 7 June 1977. Alex Robinson's mother, Anne, had gone to Spain to give birth. She had had her first child, Nicky, there two years earlier, and didn't trust her London NHS hospital with her next child. Alex was overdue and had to be induced, forcing the Spanish doctor to cancel a planned trip to England to join in the silver jubilee celebrations.

When Anne, who was named after the Queen's daughter, returned to the UK, friends and relatives gave her special silver jubilee souvenirs to mark the occasion, including a towel and night clothes for her baby, and a football that Alex remembers playing with. His parents, who lived in south-east London (his father, Michael, worked for the Foreign Office), went on to have two more children – Christopher, now 18, and Katy, 15.

Baby Lucy was taken back home to Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, where she was introduced to her siblings – Marie-Clare, then 12, Katie, 11, and Tim, nine. Her father was a consultant radiologist, and her mother a speech therapist. "My childhood was happy. I was quite spoilt, being very much the youngest child. I was amazed that I actually started walking, because someone was always carrying me around."

She recalls watching Charles and Diana's wedding on the television in 1981. "I thought her dress looked lovely, but I remember thinking Charles looked quite ugly. I didn't relate to it at all."

Alex, whose mother gave him a special royal wedding Ladybird book, also watched the ceremony. "Whenever there's a royal event like that we do all gather around the TV. It's important to my mum, and as a result, it's important to all of us, because we grew up watching that sort of thing," he says. Alex remembers there being Charles and Diana mugs around the house.

Lucy was a weekly boarder at a private secondary school in Cambridge, and went on to study medicine at Bristol University. "Right from when I was little I wanted to be a doctor. At the end of school, I used to go to my dad's office while he'd be reporting X-rays, so it probably inspired me," she says.

Alex spent periods of his childhood in Spain and Paris because of his father's postings, and also attended a boarding school in Sevenoaks, Kent. "When I was seven I wanted to be an inventor," he says. "Then I wanted to be a writer until I was about 12, and then a historian, and then an artist." He attended Kingston University and gained a first-class degree in sculpture.

When Diana, Princess of Wales, died in 1997, Lucy was shocked. "Then I forgot about it. It was sad, but she was just another person. She wasn't related to me. I did watch the funeral. I thought the nation's reaction was over the top – there are so many other things that are more important.

"I've always been indifferent to the Royal Family because my family feel strongly that you should work your way in life. My mother is still quite traditional, but my father is Greek and is very much of the opinion that you should abolish the royals. I took more after him."

At the time of the fatal crash in Paris, Alex's family was living in Gibraltar. "We were about to go to bed and it was breaking news. Mum called us down and we watched it," remembers Alex. "At the time it didn't really sink in, but over the next few days there was no way of avoiding it. I was upset. You just don't imagine that someone in the royal family is going to die. I kept my feelings more to myself because I felt it was more honest than being part of the media frenzy. We all watched the funeral."

In August last year, Lucy started work as a house officer at Bristol Royal Infirmary. "It's quite a bad time to be ill because there are all these new doctors. It was a shock having such responsibilities after being a student." She is now at Weston General Hospital in Weston-super-Mare. "I probably want to be a hospital doctor rather than a GP," she says.

Since leaving university, Alex, who lives with his family in Blackheath, south-east London, has worked in a record shop, been a PA to a sculptress and done office work. He now works front of house at the Hayward Gallery and sells merchandise at the Royal Festival Hall.

The news of the Queen Mother's death took a while to sink in. "You took her being around for granted," he says. "It was sad because there was always a completeness about the Royal Family." Lucy didn't feel any sadness about her death. "I thought people spending eight hours queuing to walk past her coffin was just ridiculous. They never knew this person," she says.

Despite her special birth date, Lucy will not be celebrating the golden jubilee in June. In fact, she would dearly like the country to become a republic. "I don't agree with the concept of the monarchy. I think it's undemocratic. I do think that the Queen is doing her job well – it's the whole principle behind the monarchy that I don't agree with. It perpetuates the class system. It says that who you are born matters more than what you make of yourself. I think that you should be able to earn your place in society and earn your right to influence politics or decision making.

"I don't think a lot of the other royals behave very well. I'm not interested in their wardrobe or who they're going out with. All the press that Camilla and Charles attract, it just doesn't interest me. I just think: 'Why would anyone want to know about it?' Diana did a few things that were worthwhile, like the way she reacted to Aids patients, but she didn't earn her place. She was just someone who was attractive and who the media latched on to because she looked nice in pictures."

Alex, however, believes that the nation would always regret a decision to abolish the monarchy. "They're part of people's heritage," he says. "The country simply wouldn't be the same place if it was a republic. They provide us with a sense of identity. They're always there and a part of Britain that's not in flux. And they provide a sense of occasion. The Queen's probably my favourite, possibly Anne as well."

He is already excited at the thought of celebrating the Queen's golden jubilee. "I will certainly go up to London to see what's happening. I'm really pleased that the fever is already building up."