Marvellous

by Neil Baldwin

  NEIL

  It’s a poor show when you even have to watch what the committee are doing. It’s not a very good example, is it? But Gary was a great chap and a very good Rag Secretary. He was a very good friend of mine. I think he learned his lesson.

  In 1990 it was time for another celebration because I had been at Keele for thirty years. The service was taken by Chris Kemp, a very good friend of mine, who was a vicar I had met in London at the theological college.

  We had two speakers to talk about my life, both of them former presidents of the Students’ Union, which was marvellous. One of them was Malcolm and other was Steve Shufflebotham, who had been president in 1977. He calls himself Steve Botham now. He said he dropped the ‘Shuffle’ so that his kids didn’t hate him. That’s funny, isn’t it? When he was president he was a Liberal, not Labour like most of them, but he was a very good president and a good friend of mine. It was a lovely service.

  MALCOLM

  Neil, as ever, revelled in the occasion, and it was clear, as it always is, just how much the chapel community at Keele love him. The chapel was full and Neil sang a solo, which he always does at these services.

  I had a word with the minister who took the service. He said he had met Neil at theological college in London. He told me that Neil ‘seemed to know all the bishops’. That figures!

  By then Neil was adjusting to a completely new way of life. The year before, 1989, he had not only left the circus but had moved into his own flat.

  His mum Mary was worried about what would happen to Neil when she was no longer around. She wanted to see if he could manage living on his own. She also wanted to teach him some life skills, such as how to shop and do other things that she had done for him. Mary was a far-sighted woman, and she had been thinking and praying about this for some time.

  NEIL

  My mum suggested that I should move into my own flat. At first I didn’t want to because I had always lived with Mum and I was a bit worried about how she would cope without me, but I agreed to it to keep her happy.

  I moved into a flat that is only just across the green from where we lived, so it was very easy for me to pop back home every day to help Mum or take Jessie, our dog, out for a walk. It also meant I had more room for all my circus and football programmes and could have more birds to look after, so it worked out well for everyone. Mum also came into my new flat to do some of the cleaning and tidying.

  MALCOLM

  If he couldn’t manage, Mary had a back-up plan. She thought he might go to live at Cerne Abbas Monastery in Dorset, where Neil went to stay for a couple of weeks. He was accepted to go to live there after Mary died.

  NEIL

  I enjoyed staying at the monastery at Cerne Abbas for two weeks because it’s a very pretty village and of course a very holy place. I helped the monks making honey.

  I know that Mum meant well when she thought of it and fixed it up. She said that I should only go to live there if I wanted to, but I didn’t because it’s far too far from Keele University and Stoke City, and there aren’t any football pitches for the Neil Baldwin Football Club to play on.

  So I still live in the same flat. It’s very good because it’s easy to get to Keele or into town on the bus.

  MALCOLM

  James Townend, a Keele student, remembers his first meeting with Neil in the early 1990s and then playing for NBFC:

  I have very happy memories of playing a few matches for NBFC and of Neil himself. He certainly left his mark on myself and friends at the time.

  I have vivid memories of my first encounter with Neil on my first night at university. Neil was sat in the reception of the Students’ Union, in the place he was always to be found for the next four years, trying to sign people up for his football team, which a keen few of us, not really knowing what to make of this larger-than-life character, did.

  We were a bit sceptical of his claims about people whom he knew and things he had done, but it soon became apparent that they were true. We soon got to hear the stories of him applying for the England job, being Stoke kit man, and our doubts were cast aside when one day, not long afterwards at the sports hall, we saw him sat having a pizza with [the then Stoke manager] Lou Macari.

  A couple of matches stand out – one a day out to Cambridge, which was just brilliant from the journey down in an old minibus, listening to Neil’s stories for the whole journey, to the tour round the grounds of the university, to the match on the pristine pitch. I can’t remember the result but I seem to feel like we won. I’m sure Neil has detailed records of each match.

  The other was the match Neil organised for us to play at Newcastle Town’s ground against a guest eleven – it was for some sort of anniversary but I can’t remember what exactly – and Neil had managed to get the Liverpool legend David Fairclough to play in the game. I do seem to remember that I kicked him in the first couple of minutes, and he wasn’t too happy about that. I recall Neil coming onto the pitch for the last five or ten minutes.

  I also remember his fairly frequent visits to our block in Horwood Hall at Keele on the pretence of talking football, but I suspect he was more there for the tea and biscuits. I have a memory of his staying in my room for beans on toast at one point.

  NEIL

  It was a great game to raise money for charity at Newcastle Town. We played a team of old stars. We won 5–0. I wrote to David Fairclough at Liverpool to get him to come, and then rang him up. He only played the first half because he didn’t like getting kicked. Gordon Banks played, but not in goal.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE STOKE CITY KIT MAN

  NEIL

  I applied for the job as Stoke City manager but they didn’t give it to me. They gave it to Lou Macari in the summer of 1991, and I got to know Lou very soon after he got the job. I knew he would want to meet me as soon as possible. All the managers do. Lou’s a very nice man and a very good friend of mine.

  MALCOLM

  Lou Macari was appointed as Stoke’s manager in the summer of 1991. Neil, of course, was still a regular outside the ground and the training ground and he soon came to know Lou.

  In his autobiography, Football, My Life, Lou recalls meeting Neil at a ‘Meet the Manager’ evening, when Neil wished him all the best. ‘Thanks very much,’ said Lou. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a circus clown.’

  ‘Oh, really? And what do you do in your act?’

  ‘They throw me off the back of a fire engine.’

  ‘What, every night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As we have seen, Neil had in fact ended his career as a circus clown in 1989. Lou describes in his autobiography the decision to appoint him kit man:

  I detected a character in my midst. I decided he was the man for me and Nello eventually became the kit man. That was a promotion. Before that his role was to make me laugh and the players.

  Nello had a heart of gold; the club did not pay him a penny. He did it all for love and we loved having him around. His real value was in helping the players relax before games. No chemist ever produced a drug that could reduce stress levels like Nello. I was convinced that this gave us an edge in matches. Nello bonded the group.

  He describes Neil as his ‘best ever signing in football’.

  NEIL

  Lou offered me the job as kit man after he had been at Stoke for a few weeks. I was really pleased because I had been a Stoke fan all my life and knew I could help him and the team.

  At first my mum didn’t believe that I was going to be kit man. She didn’t think I could look after the kit and do washing, because she had done all that for me. Stoke City didn’t pay me, but I didn’t mind. I did it for love. Lou says I am his best ever signing, and he’s right. My mum used to speak to Lou and she loved him because of what he did for me. She knew he would look after me.

  MALCOLM

  At first I didn’t really believe it, either. Neither did most of Neil’s friends. But we should have known better.

  Ivan Gask
ell, who was Radio Stoke’s Stoke City reporter at the time, remembers Lou and then Neil arriving at the club.

  Lou was energetic and charismatic. Almost immediately there was a different atmosphere in the ground. It was more relaxed. One day I turned up to interview Lou and in the corner of his office was Nello, who Lou introduced as his personal assistant. He just sat there with a grin on his face. He had simply appeared from nowhere and I knew nothing about him; no explanation was given on who he was.

  I visited the club at least two or three times a week. Nello just immersed himself in the fabric of the dressing room. At first I couldn’t work out who he was or why he was there. I think it was a deliberate tactic by Lou, and Nello had a specific role. Lou wanted to introduce fun, humour and lightness around the place. Neil was just there, a sort of stooge, someone to bounce off, a random element. Something different.

  I spent many hours in the corridor waiting for interviews. There was often constant laughter, with Nello moving from one room to the next; there was shouting and banter. It was often directed at Neil, but he also gave it back. He would be in the sauna in fancy dress; the whole thing was slightly bizarre and surreal. It made my work far more interesting and definitely unforgettable.

  But Neil was very smart, with a sparkle in his eye. In his own way he was quite a smart cookie. He was living his dream, but also he brought something to the table. He was quite canny.

  Players used to let off steam directed at Neil, and some of the banter had an edge to it. But I think over time Nello melted that away and they came to love him.

  To some extent I think Lou was trying to wind the players up. I suspect some of them railed against it at first because the dressing room tends to be the players’ inner sanctum and some of them thought it not very professional to have somebody like Nello in the dressing room. But Lou brought in strong characters and ultimately good guys and they accepted Neil in the end.

  Adrian Hurst, who worked for the club (and is still employed at the club, at the time of writing, as community manager) says, ‘I’m sure Lou saw it as a form of stress relief.’

  At the time I assumed he was employed and getting paid in the normal way. I was very surprised when I finally found out that he wasn’t. So, after he left, I asked the club to give him a free season ticket for life, in return for his not being paid for all those years, which they readily agreed to do.

  The decision to take Neil on in what was effectively a full-time job without paying him a wage could be regarded as risky in employment and insurance terms (particularly if anything had happened to Neil, for example, as he wheeled the large heavy skips of kit from the coach to the dressing rooms at away games). But Neil has never seen anything wrong with the arrangement. He was just delighted to be involved with the club he loves.

  Neil wasn’t really in charge of the kit. That task fell to the longstanding kit manager Winnie Hudson, who was employed by Stoke throughout Neil’s time there. She was responsible for ensuring that the kit was properly washed and that the first team’s kit was available and in good order on match days.

  The only thing that Winnie did not always do, which Neil did, was to accompany the team to away matches. She was a key figure in Neil’s time at Stoke City because, after he joined the club, Winnie had another important role: that of showing Neil the ropes and helping him, looking out for him and, on occasions, making sure that any teasing, practical jokes or even bullying directed at Neil by the players or other staff did not go too far.

  NEIL

  Winnie was great. She was the best kit manager in the country. She was behind the scenes but she gave great service to Stoke City. She always looked after me and was a bit like a mum to me. I helped her look after the kit and get it ready.

  We were a very good team, a better team than the players sometimes, as I used to tell them. I really enjoyed being the kit man helping her. Sometimes if she wasn’t there I would do some of the washing. She couldn’t always go into the dressing room if the players were getting changed, so I did that. There was always banter in there. I had my own black ‘Carling’ sponsor’s tracksuit with my initials ‘NB’ on it, just like the players and the manager, because the kit man is very important.

  MALCOLM

  Adrian Hurst remembers the roles of both Winnie and Neil:

  Winnie was a mother figure to Neil. That was evident from Day One. I remember meeting Neil for the first time. He was a larger-than-life character, but at first I didn’t appreciate his vulnerability.

  Neil was very proud of what he was doing, and wanted to do it well – for example, when he was cleaning boots. He used to spend ages carefully cutting up strips of Lycra for the players’ socks.

  He really enjoyed being there. Everyone else enjoyed him being there. It created an atmosphere of infectious good fun.

  The players were very good to him on a one-to-one basis, but sometimes there was a gang mentality when they were together with a lot of fun at Neil’s expense. This occasionally went too far, such as when he was locked in the sauna, which was intended as a bit of fun but was not sensible. Neil normally took it all in his stride, and he always walked off with a throwaway line back at them, but very occasionally he could get a bit upset and aggressive in response.

  He had a great relationship with the teenage apprentice player lads, even though they used to throw trainers at him, very hard. I didn’t always like the things which happened, but, if Lou was around, it would be dealt with. Nello stayed for years, so he must have been happy.

  Some others who were at the club at that time have told me that sometimes they felt uncomfortable about the things that were done to Neil, such as removing his clothes on a coach journey, but that it was really down to Lou to decide if things had gone too far. If he didn’t do anything about it, it didn’t really fall to anyone else to do so. But Neil himself takes a very positive view.

  NEIL

  All the players liked me. Some of them were really kind to me. There was only one who was very nasty, and I think Lou might have got rid of him partly because of the way he treated me. But I’m not going to say who it was because what does it matter now? It’s all in the past. The practical jokes were just a bit of fun. There’s always jokes and banter with football players. You just have to accept it, and give them some back. I remember being locked in the sauna, but they were only having a laugh. They didn’t succeed in getting my clothes off on the bus. Sometimes I got my own back. I was very happy, and was Lou’s right-hand man. He’s still a very good friend of mine.

  MALCOLM

  One of the players, Lee Sandford, saw Neil’s contribution like this:

  When Lou Macari got the job he gave Neil the job as kit man and it was clever because it took the pressure off the players. He became part of the furniture. It worked, the team was successful, and Neil was a hundred per cent part of that success and contributed to it in his own way.

  He was the butt of jokes, but he gave it out as well. When we were going to away games, Neil was such a massive character that everything reflected onto him and not the players because of the humour and the banter, and Lou was clever enough to use that. It worked really well.

  We had big silver laundry skips that the kit went into, and they were so big that if we put Neil into one of them he couldn’t get out. At the Victoria Ground the tunnel’s on a slope and we put him in one of the skips and rolled it down the tunnel. He’d laugh it off.

  But sometimes Winnie would come and tell us off and then we’d stop. Winnie was a lovely lady and she was also part of the success of the team. She was great. She looked after us childish footballers. She did the hard work; Neil was the fun and games.

  Martin Carruthers, another player, about whom we shall hear more later, also recalls Neil’s and Winnie’s roles:

  We had banter with Nello every day. Sometimes we’d throw him in a cold bath or wheel him round the pitch in the shopping trolley they used for the dirty kit. If it went a bit too far for him he’d go shouting for Winnie, the kit
woman. Winnie and Nello washed all the players’ kit, and they brought it back in a shopping trolley. It was Nello’s job to bring it back in the shopping trolley, and often he’d end up in the trolley, and he’d be screaming for Winnie. Winnie was his guardian angel. Whenever he was in trouble with the lads or we were trying to get him to do something he didn’t want to do, Winnie would come along, and the lads would listen to Winnie. Sometimes she thought it was funny, but sometimes she would bawl us out and then we’d stop. Winnie was brilliant. She had a lot of banter with Nello as well.

  The first time I spoke to Neil was after I signed for Stoke, and there was a clause in my contract that said they were going to give me a holiday. So I went to see Lou Macari about it and Nello was in Lou’s office and Lou said, ‘Nello, take this lad to the travel agent and book him a holiday.’ I thought, This is a joke. But Nello took me to the travel agent – they all knew him there, he was famous around Stoke, more famous than the players – and he said, ‘Where do you want to go?’ And Nello and the travel agent showed me a few brochures and I said, ‘Ibiza.’ so Nello booked me a holiday in Ibiza.

  Then he took me back to Lou Macari’s office. Everyone else knocked when they went to Lou Macari’s office but Nello just walked in.