Marvellous

by Neil Baldwin

  ‘Oh, you know him, then, Neil?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a very good friend of mine. When I saw in the Stoke newspaper The Sentinel that he’s from Cambridge University, I gave him a ring to congratulate him and told him about my connections with Cambridge. He and his wife invited me down to tea, so I went.’

  I think Professor Harrison may have been under the impression that Neil was the Anglican chaplain. When he arrived at Keele, I don’t know whether he told everyone that his first act as the new VC was to invite Neil Baldwin down to take tea with him. But, actually, if he wanted to learn about Keele, that was as good a starting place as any.

  Francis Beckett included that story in an article in The Guardian about Neil a quarter of a century later. David Harrison read the article and sent Neil a postcard congratulating him on his fifty years at Keele.

  NEIL

  Professor Harrison invited me down for a weekend because he wanted to meet me. He’d just had the appointment. I knew he’d been appointed. I managed to find out. And it was in the paper as well. When I saw he was from Cambridge I rang him up. I got through. I said, ‘I’m Neil Baldwin from Keele.’ He asked me who I was. I said, ‘I’m in the church.’ He said, ‘Come and stay for the weekend.’ And we’ve been friends ever since. The Bishop of Lichfield has the same degree as he had.

  In 1979 Mum and I learned that we had to move out of our prefab house in Ripon Avenue because the council had decided to knock it down. At first I was sad, because I had always lived there. I am a Chesterton boy and had a lot of friends there.

  But the council rehoused us in a lovely house in the Thistleberry area of Newcastle. It had a garden at the back, and there were no houses opposite, so we could look up at the fields and hill towards Keele. It was a marvellous place to live, because it was nearer to the town centre and easier to get to Stoke City. But what made it really good was that it was much easier to get to Keele because it’s just at the bottom of Keele bank, so it’s just one short bus ride to get up there.

  For many years Mum had been looking after an elderly Christadelphian friend we called Uncle Fred. His wife had died. He lived in Market Drayton, and that meant a forty-mile return trip for Mum several times a week, which made her very tired, but he didn’t have anyone else to look after him. All our friends were amazed at how she had the energy and time to drive to Market Drayton to look after Uncle Fred as well as keep on looking after me, giving me lifts, doing my washing, feeding me.

  Mum gave Uncle Fred a lot of help and was very upset when he passed away. He left his house to my mum. That was how she had enough money to eventually buy our house in Thistleberry under the right-to-buy legislation, so she didn’t have to pay rent any more. It was very good of him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NELLO THE CIRCUS CLOWN

  NEIL

  I always loved the circus, particularly the trapeze, ever since my mum had taken me to see it in Stoke. Bailey Fossett was in charge of Fossett’s Circus, and he was a very good friend of mine. In the seventies, when I went to the circus, I used to speak to everyone, so they all knew me.

  I left Woods, the pottery, in 1980, after fifteen years. That’s a long time to work for one firm. I could see that the pottery business was getting worse, and wanted to leave and go into the circus. I said to myself, I would like to be a clown. I’ve always wanted to be a clown. So I wrote to Sir Robert Fossett’s circus and got a job with them as a circus clown, starting in March 1980.

  Training for a clown is hard. It’s hard work being a clown, and, if you don’t learn how to do it, you can’t get it right. You learn how to fall and get up again. Your clothes have material underneath to break your fall. You learn to throw balls and eggs in the air and catch them, and an egg falls on your face and breaks and all the kids laugh. I had to fall out of a taxi.

  They helped me to do it and the second year I went back and they made me principal clown and gave me a £200 bonus. Sometimes I was dressed as a gorilla.

  I had to go to Northampton first, then Peterborough. I had never lived away from my mum before. I used to be with the circus from March until November, and then come back home to my mum and Keele. I travelled all over the country with the circus. I loved it, and so did all the children who came to see us.

  You can always make people laugh when you get dressed up. That’s one thing I learned from being in the circus, which came in useful later on when I became the Stoke City kit man.

  The circuses I worked for put me in their caravan at first, but Mum bought me one of my own a few years after. It was a tiny caravan. In the winter we kept it in a garage at the back of Thistleberry Avenue.

  Of course, during the winter, when I was not away with the circus, I went to Keele nearly every day, kept the Neil Baldwin Football Club going and was still Rag Safety Officer. You have to keep yourself occupied, don’t you?

  MALCOLM

  One day in 1981, by which time we were living in Sale near Manchester, Neil rang to tell us that Fossett’s Circus, in which he was appearing, was visiting Wythenshawe in South Manchester. We naturally decided to take my two young daughters, Zara and Zoe, to see the show, and arranged to visit him in his caravan beforehand. We found this small, rather dishevelled caravan, with quite amateurish writing on the side. We arrived just as Neil was collecting his tea from the catering van.

  He announced that he had a problem, namely that the gorilla suit he was due to wear was badly ripped. Upon examination, it was obviously unwearable.

  ‘Can you stitch it up for me, Lesley?’ he asked my wife.

  ‘Of course, Neil. Have you got a needle and thread?’ He hadn’t, of course, so we visited fellow circus performers to see if one of them could come up with the required equipment. Fortunately, someone did.

  Lesley then sat down and undertook extensive repair work to this rather unattractive garment, which, apart from anything else, didn’t look as if it had seen the inside of a washing machine for a considerable period. The task was eventually completed and Neil was set up for the show, which we all enjoyed.

  ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t been here to repair the suit, Neil?’ Lesley asked innocently.

  ‘Somebody would have done it,’ Neil replied.

  This is probably true. There always is somebody to help Neil out of his scrapes. That’s because of who Neil is. People are very willing to help him out, just because he is Neil.

  NEIL

  It was great to see Malcolm and Lesley and their daughters on that day. The little girls really enjoyed it and I made them laugh. When I went round the country with the circus I always got in touch with anyone I knew in that area, because I knew that they would be disappointed if they had missed the chance to see me.

  MALCOLM

  He did too. Tony Bartlett recalls: ‘Once when he was a clown in Middlesbrough he phoned up my mum and dad. They went to see him in the caravan, did some of his washing and fed him. He is never afraid of asking.’

  And Cousin Brenda says:

  When Neil came to Liverpool with the circus he would just ring up out of the blue and ask us to come across the water and pick him up, which wasn’t always easy with children, but you do it because it’s Neil, and it was always good to see him.

  NEIL

  In 1981, when the circus was in Cambridge, all the Cambridge Boat Race crew came to see me.

  When the circus went to Canterbury I went to see Professor David Ingram and he took me out for a meal. He was the vice chancellor of the University of Kent. Professor Ingram had been a very good friend of mine when he was at Keele. I always thought he would become a vice chancellor somewhere one day. I hoped it might be at Keele. He was a wonderful man who was very involved in the chapel and the Christian groups at Keele. I was sad when he died in 2001.

  MALCOLM

  David Ingram had been deputy vice chancellor at Keele in the 1960s. He was a charismatic professor of physics, who is remembered by all Keele students because he always gave the very first inspiring lecture on the u
niverse in the unique Keele Foundation Year. He was prominent in the Keele Christian community.

  Perry Spillar, who is now one of Radio Stoke’s presenters, was a child when he saw Neil for the first time. Perry’s father, Dennis, was the vicar in Stratford-upon-Avon, but before that he had been a curate in Clayton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, so of course he knew Neil.

  One day Perry heard his father answer the telephone and say, ‘Who’s this speaking? Oh, it’s you, Neil. You’re a clown? Really? And you’re coming to Stratford upon Avon?’

  Dennis then tried to explain to his son who Neil was, but it wasn’t easy. Perry says:

  I remember this conversation quite vividly as he tried to tell me why Neil was so well known and popular and exactly how he managed to get so much done. Dad came to the conclusion that Neil was some sort of accidental, natural-born publicity-and-marketing genius. I also remember thinking how strange to go through life with such an unquestioning sense of confidence and expectation, this at a time when I was suffering the usual awkwardness and embarrassment of a teenager, worrying immensely at the smallest of issues. My dad talked to me about Neil’s football team.

  So I went with my dad to see Neil performing in the circus. There were two clowns, and Neil was the second one. He was dressed as a gorilla. I remember sitting in the circus and we weren’t quite certain which one was Neil.

  After the show we went to see him in his very small caravan. We were sitting there with washing hanging up all over the caravan while Neil, dressed in the gorilla suit, made us a cup of tea. Quite surreal.

  NEIL

  I had four summers with Fossett’s Circus in England. After that, for the next two summers, I was with circuses in Ireland, first Fossett’s in 1984 and Courtenay’s in 1985. I wasn’t a gorilla any more, just Nello the Clown. We did music and gags. As a clown you register your face colours and make-up pattern and no one else can use them. So it’s unique. There’s only one Nello. In Ireland we did lots of work with schools, which I really liked. I have always loved entertaining children.

  I returned to England with Ray Smith’s Galaxy Circus for three years from 1986 to 1988. I also appeared in Hoffman’s Circus locally in the Potteries. That was for just one week. That was when I had to fall off the back of a fire engine.

  One time I was visiting Cambridge with the circus when Prince Edward was there, and I thought he would like the chance to meet me. I found out where his room was and went to it. I was expecting to find a policeman on the door, but there wasn’t one. So I knocked on the door and luckily he was in.

  I told him how I love all the royal family and I often write to his mother. He invited me in for a glass of sherry. It was very nice sherry and he is a very nice man, like all the royal family.

  MALCOLM

  Vic Trigg recalls:

  After leaving Keele, Helen and I kept in close touch with Mary and sometimes saw Neil, who worked in the circus from 1980 to 1989. There were at least a couple of occasions when we collected him from abandoned sites at the end of the circus season. On one occasion it seemed that Neil’s disreputable caravan was simply being abandoned at the side of the road once he had vacated it.

  Mary got into caravanning herself. I think this was due to her sister Beryl, who had a caravan in the Peak District. Mary bought a caravan of her own in Derbyshire and then moved it to our land at Market Drayton from about 1985 to 1995 and often stayed in it for three to four weeks at a time with her dog, birdwatching, walking and talking to people.

  NEIL

  At the end of the circus season I asked friends to come and pick me up and bring me home. They didn’t mind. Vic and Helen did it once. After my mum had given me my own caravan as a present, that obviously had to be brought home as well, which was a bit more difficult to do. You need a tow bar to do that.

  Nineteen eighty-nine was my last year in the circus. I started with Johnny Fossett’s Circus. They were different from Robert Fossett’s, although they were related. All the circus families are related to each other, you know, and I know them all. But they had an argument with me. Someone said I wasn’t pulling my weight, which was very unfair, and they didn’t pay me my proper money, which wasn’t fair, either. They gave me the push and just left me on my own in a lay-by somewhere in Leicestershire, which wasn’t very nice.

  But I went to the local minister and got in touch with Morrison’s Circus. They gave me a job and rescued me. They even sent an RAC van and loaded my caravan onto it and took me all the way to Scotland. Morrison’s Circus paid for that. That was nice of them, but they must have thought I was a good clown and they wanted me in their circus.

  The Morrison’s boss had a car accident and the season had to finish early, so I was left stuck in Scotland. To make things worse, my caravan got stolen. I think it was gypsies. I told the police but they didn’t do anything. So I went to the local vicar to get some help. I told him who I was and what had happened. It’s a good idea to go to a vicar because we Christians will always do what we can to help others. It’s what Jesus told us to do in the Bible. I always try to help other people who are in difficulty if I can and I know others will do the same for me.

  He got in touch with my mum and they sorted it out. The Scottish vicar gave me a lift halfway back to England. I think it might have been to Dumfries but I might be wrong about that. The English vicar picked me up from there. I think it was the Keele vicar, Mark Turner.

  After all that I decided not be a clown anymore and that I would be better looking for a job in football.

  There were some important anniversaries around that time, too. Three years earlier, for instance, I’d had my fortieth birthday.

  MALCOLM

  Cousin Brenda remembers: ‘In 1986, Neil placed an advert in The Times for his own fortieth birthday, and the bill was invoiced to Auntie Mary. She used to get worried about Neil running up bills for her.’

  NEIL

  And the year before, 1985, I’d celebrated my twenty-five years at Keele. I asked Dennis Spillar, Perry Spillar’s dad, to come up to Keele and take the service of thanksgiving. That was the first of the four services of thanksgiving at Keele that I have had.

  MALCOLM

  Perry adds:

  When Dad took Neil’s service of thanksgiving in 1985, he came up from Stratford-upon-Avon to do so. That’s the effect Neil has on people he knows. They are usually willing to do things for him, even if it’s quite a lot of trouble.

  NEIL

  And I didn’t forget the NBFC, either. My football team played once against a Coventry team that included Tony Hateley, a great centre-forward who played for a lot of the top clubs.

  We lost 14–2. I scored one goal. But it was a good experience for the lads. I told them to learn from it.

  I also got a sponsor for my football team. That was the Wheatsheaf pub, which is at Onneley, not far from Keele. We had blue team shirts with ‘Wheatsheaf Pub’ written on the front, which showed what an important club we were.

  We sometimes used to have the annual dinner of NBFC at the Wheatsheaf, and had some good guest speakers. Malcolm was one of them. We sometimes had some Stoke City players there. They thought it was an honour to be invited. I always got presented with the Player of the Year prize at them. Sometimes they did ‘This is your life: Neil Baldwin’.

  MALCOLM

  Stephen Benn remembers those dinners:

  A development of the football club that I remember very clearly was the Neil Baldwin Football Club annual dinner. This was a dress-up occasion, and, though I know I didn’t wear a black tie, I’m not entirely sure that Neil didn’t. At the dinner I remember in particular he said that there would be a special guest coming to present the prizes, namely Jimmy Greenhoff who played for Stoke City (and would later play for Manchester United).

  It was held at the Thistleberry on the Keele Road. Jimmy Greenhoff was a major footballing figure at the time. So for it to be claimed that he would be presenting the prizes sounded very grand. But he was there, and he did just that. The
re were several different prizes. I think I’m right that Neil was Player of the Year.

  NEIL

  Yes, he’s right. I won Player of the Season every year. And of course I still had an important responsibility as Rag Safety Officer.

  MALCOLM

  He certainly did, and he took it very seriously. Gary Thomas, a student at that time, recounts how even Rag officials weren’t immune from Neil’s authority:

  Back in 1983, I was Rag Committee secretary, and Neil was our safety officer. That year, the theme of Rag Week was clowns (not because of Neil’s background – just coincidental). The culmination of the week involved us going to Newcastle on a low-loader, all dressed as clowns (the costumes made by one of the committee members from sheets and individually customised). Neil didn’t disappoint, and arrived dressed as Nello – showing us all how it’s done.

  We returned on the flatbed, all in high spirits and a little giddy. Approaching the Lodge entrance, I saw two friends walking down the hill. I jumped off the flatbed with my collecting can to accost them, and landed in front of a car, which ground to a halt. I looked up at the cab of the flatbed to see Neil leaning out of the window, looking at me, with his accusative finger pointing at me. I knew I was in trouble.

  I caught up with the flatbed and we continued on to Keele. We got off the lorry and Neil got out of the cab and walked towards me. He told me off for being so stupid. ‘What would I have told your mum and dad if you’d been run over by that car? Don’t ever do that again!’ he said. I apologised, knowing he was right. However, it was difficult to take seriously a reprimand delivered by a man dressed as a clown!