Marvellous

by Neil Baldwin

  NEIL

  In 2001 I applied for the England manager’s job, but they gave it to him with the glasses, Sven-Göran Eriksson.

  Because I have been at Keele so long, I have a very long list of former students who are very good friends of mine. Sometimes they come back to Keele for reunions, and I love to see them. I go to the reunion dinners and I see a lot of my old friends there.

  MALCOLM

  Once upon a time, the establishment didn’t quite approve of Neil’s being at the dinner. Jo Rogers, a former Keele student who married lecturer John Rogers, used to organise the reunion dinners, and recalls:

  I was secretary to the Keele Society for many years. Each year I would organise the Keele Society Reunion weekend and, as the date approached, Neil would contact me, checking on the date and which groups were invited back. On the evening of the dinner, Neil would be there, at first just mingling with the graduates and clearly expecting to have a place at the meal, which, of course, I found for him. He enjoyed it, the graduates were delighted (or sometimes bemused if they were of a pre-Neil era).

  But in the early 1990s it all became much more professional. The university appointed a lady with overall responsibility for dealings with alumni. The reunion dinners were still organised by me. Neil still made an appearance and enjoyed his free dinner amongst friends, but our arrangement was unpopular to say the least. I suspect she felt Neil had no place at such events and I got reprimanded severely for allowing it. Not that it made a jot of difference to me, nor to Neil, who never realised that he was ever unwelcome, bless him.

  The dinners are now organised by John Easom. He says:

  When I took over alumni relations in 2005 at first I also bridled at Neil inviting himself to reunions unannounced. But at the time I knew neither the Man nor the Myth. After a couple of years I understood and let him attend if he wanted to – invariably free of charge. Some things just don’t fit into rule books.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NEIL LEARNS TO LIVE ON HIS OWN

  NEIL

  Even though I was sad to see it, it was God’s will and best for Mum that she went into a home, because she couldn’t cope, even though I was doing my best to help her. It was on Keele Road, a very short distance from her house and my flat, which was very helpful for me in visiting her and doing errands for her. It was a lovely home and she was happy there.

  MALCOLM

  Around the turn of the century Mary was getting increasingly frail. In some ways it was a blessing in disguise that Neil had left his job at Stoke City, otherwise he would have been able to give her much less help and support than he did.

  She eventually moved into Thistleberry House, a local-authority care home, in 2002. Her beloved dog, Jessie, had died before she moved into the home. Les and Mary Bailey had given her much support. Les recalls:

  Towards the end Mary was in and out of hospital for eighteen months to two years. The year before she went into the home she had had more weeks in hospital than she had at home. We had to sort things out with the carers. They only made soup and toast. They were supposed to be there for forty-five minutes but they weren’t.

  Once, we found out that she hadn’t been paid her pension for six months, but she hadn’t noticed. She used to give Neil money to do the shopping and one day got worried that she hadn’t got enough money. This was because nobody had responsibility for notifying the pension authority that somebody had come out of hospital. At first they refused to back-date it.

  One day we found a gas ring on in her house. On another occasion paper was singeing close to the gas ring. It was a close shave. She was no longer able to cook meals. Neil started to get very good at helping his mum, although he still couldn’t tie his shoelaces!

  Mary adds:

  We went to her eightieth birthday party in the home. She also had her eighty-first birthday party there. She was in the residential home for about eighteen months. She was very happy there, despite the lack of independence, because it had got to the point where she could no longer cope at home. She always had a tremendous sense of humour. Visiting her was never a burden.

  We found a building society book in Neil’s name with six hundred pounds. Mary said that you are going to have to give it to him. A few months later there was no money in it. We asked him why there was no money and realised that he had little concept of adding things up. We got in touch with [the mental-health charity] MIND about Neil’s welfare, and social services went round to see him. He simply told them that he didn’t have a problem and that was the end of that.

  Vic Trigg remembers: ‘Mary became progressively more forgetful in later life and by the time she was living in the care home she could not remember the names of visitors when it was time to say goodbye to them.’

  That was my experience, too, as she couldn’t remember the names of my three daughters or got them mixed up. Although she had been getting more frail and forgetful, it was unexpected when she died overnight shortly before Christmas 2003. Neil rang to give us the news. It was one of the saddest phone calls I have ever received, because she was not only a close friend, but a truly remarkable woman.

  NEIL

  Of course, I was very sad when Mum died. Even though it is God’s will and I know she has gone to a better place, I cried. But you have to get on with life. I knew that she wouldn’t want me to be sad, so I decided not to be. She is up there watching me.

  MALCOLM

  The funeral was held on 2 January 2004, in the Christadelphian Hall on Dimsdale Parade, Newcastle. It was an icy day. We had been away for New Year in remote Mid Wales and had to drive back through some snow and ice that morning to get there. We only just made it. It was a very simple ceremony, which was conducted by Les Bailey. Neil gave a eulogy to his mum, which was simple and beautiful. Les recalls: ‘I wanted to prepare the ground, by not asking Neil to say anything if he was upset. But he was quite OK.’

  NEIL

  I said what a good mum she had always been to me; how she had always looked after me; how she tried to keep me healthy by giving me salads and how she had let me go off to the circus and always let me do whatever I wanted to do. It was sad, of course, but I wasn’t nervous. I never am.

  MALCOLM

  Vic Trigg recalls: ‘We were all concerned at the funeral about Neil’s future, even though we all knew that he had built up a wide collection of friends and adds to them all the time.’

  Les and Mary Bailey had a quiet word with Vic and Helen, who said that they would ‘take Neil on’.

  When Mary was in the residential home, Neil spent Christmas Day with her, apart from going to chapel at Keele. Since her death, Tony and Irene Bartlett have invited him to their house for Christmas Day. They drive from Congleton to Keele to pick him up after church. Tony says:

  Neil always wants to watch the Queen, and always asks me to get him some circus programmes off eBay.

  A few years ago he said that a student from Nigeria called Joshua had nowhere to go on Christmas Day, and could he join us? He’s not afraid to ask the direct question and forces you to make a choice between the kind and Christian thing to do, or the more selfish thing. These choices make you a kinder person. How can you say no?

  In 2013 Joshua was going somewhere else at Christmas. Neil then said that he had an Egyptian friend who had nowhere to go, so could he replace Joshua? That’s the true spirit of Christmas. Neil challenges your Christianity in the nicest possible way.

  NEIL

  I don’t like to think of anyone having nowhere to go at Christmas. It sometimes happens at Keele for students and staff who have come from abroad. There are more of them than there used to be. After all, the Christmas story is about having room at the inn. Tony and Irene are very kind people to welcome us on Christmas Day.

  In 2004 Tony and Vic built a lovely new aviary for all my birds in my flat. Before that they flew freely around the flat. That was nice but they made a bit of a mess. I had a cleaner who left because of the mess. So it’s better that they are all now
in a proper aviary and cages.

  MALCOLM

  Neil has his supporting cast. At home as well as Vic and Helen and Tony and Irene, this includes Laurence and Jenny Wood, health professionals who are members of the Keele chapel and have helped Neil manage his hip replacement and diabetes, as well as organising both voluntary, and employed domestic and health, support.

  Jenny says:

  Neil first met Laurence at Keele chapel in 1999. I didn’t know Laurence then. When I visited his house, I was amazed by all these clothes drying around the place, until Laurence explained that he does the washing for a friend of his, and started to explain about Neil. But I think he attracts the right people.

  Neil’s cleaner, Carrie Latham, does a fantastic job in challenging circumstances and says, ‘If it was anyone other than Neil, I probably wouldn’t do it.’ Stephanie Kent helps Neil with shopping and looking after his birds. His old friends Terry and Sue Conroy have also provided valuable practical help tidying his flat and helping him acquire a new wardrobe, appropriate for the many invitations which have followed Marvellous.

  NEIL

  They look after me, and I look after them. That’s what friends are for.

  MALCOLM

  Not all Neil’s trips abroad were quite so straightforward as the one to Venice (which we dealt with in Chapter 5). Les Bailey recalls:

  On one occasion Neil went to visit a circus in Switzerland. Someone at Keele had organised flights and hotels. We asked him about money. When he told us what he was taking, we realised he only had a small amount of money per day. He didn’t understand the concept of the exchange rate with Swiss currency, or how much things cost in Switzerland.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work out with the circus. He had booked in the hotel for a few days only. He thought after that he could stay in their circus caravans, but that didn’t work out. He wanted to come back early because he couldn’t get put up. We got a phone call from the Swiss airport people from Neil. He wanted to come home, but his ticket was a fixed one for a particular later date. He said, ‘I’ve run out of money.’ The airline eventually booked him on an earlier flight and he said, ‘Can you pick me up from Manchester airport.’

  On the same trip, he got lost. The Swiss police picked him up and took him back to his hotel.

  NEIL

  I don’t have any problems travelling abroad. I’ve been to Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Germany. There are always people who will help you. I am nice to people and they are nice to me. If they are not, I’ll find people who are.

  MALCOLM

  Vic Trigg sums it up like this:

  The most remarkable thing about Neil is how other people treat him. His innocence seems to bring out the best in most people. He without doubt has guardian angels, who can be the most unlikely people. He sets off hitchhiking, or goes to visit a circus in Finland with minimal knowledge of where he’s going or how to get there, yet has always escaped trouble, and is often helped by complete strangers. He goes to wait outside a theatre for Ken Dodd, who not only arrives and sees him, but gets him into the show for free. When his hip was particularly bad he took a fall on an escalator in Austria – behind him was a Lutheran pastor to pick him up.

  NEIL

  No, Vic hasn’t got it right. It was in Germany, not Austria. I had asked one of the airport ladies to help me with my case on that escalator but she just ignored me, which was why I fell over. If she had helped me, I would have been OK. She was then told off by her boss for not helping me. I nearly always find that, if you ask for something, people give it to you.

  MALCOLM

  If you’re Neil, that’s generally true, though even with Neil it’s not 100 per cent.

  Mary Bailey recalls an occasion when it didn’t work out the way Neil hoped:

  There was a Finnish lecturer at Keele called Aaro, who was over here for a year with his family. He was a lovely man who had visited Mary in hospital and had been taking Neil around and also visiting Mary at home.

  Mary told us that she and Neil were going to spend Christmas with them. She had asked Neil – are you sure, and he had said yes. But on Christmas Eve she rang us to say that Aaro’s wife knew nothing about it and they hadn’t been invited at all. So at the last minute they came to us for Christmas.

  Neil was very upset about it, but we felt he didn’t really understand the difference between being invited and inviting yourself.

  Our son was at the grumpy teenage stage and we wondered what he would make of Neil, but Neil just came in and said ‘Hello Andy’ as though he’d known him all his life and started to talk about football to him, so it was absolutely fine. He sat there most of the day doing a colouring book we bought for him.

  He used to tell us about bishops he knew, Prince Philip etc. At first we thought it was all his imagination but eventually you realise that it’s just all true. Mary had difficulty persuading him that he would not be able to go to university or become a vicar. But she had great determination that he would have a good life, and he certainly has.

  NEIL

  I met another old Keele friend about that time, and that’s how the Neil Baldwin Cup started. That’s a cup that football teams all over the country now compete for every March. It was all down to Neil Mosley, who had played in the NBFC when he was at Keele in the mid-1980s and had become head of sport at Imperial College, London. When he was a student we used to meet in the Students’ Union and we’d say, ‘Hallo, Neil’; ‘Hallo, Neil.’

  MALCOLM

  Neil Mosley chairs the University Sports Directors’ Network and gets to know his counterparts at other universities, one of whom is Angela Dale at Keele. After talking to Angela and her colleague Dennis Bourne about Neil, he thought he would like to see him again, and looked out for him the next time he had a chance to go to Keele.

  ‘I went to see Angela and we went to the Sneyd Arms for lunch with Neil,’ says Neil Mosley. In the Sneyd, the pub in Keele village, Neil Mosley said, probably only half seriously, ‘I ought to get the Neil Baldwin Football Club playing a Neil Mosley Eleven from London.’ He should have known that Neil would take him at his word. The match was soon arranged.

  ‘My eleven were Imperial College people,’ says Neil Mosley. ‘We just got people together for the game, and played at the QPR training ground.’ It became an annual event and eventually morphed into a competition for the Neil Baldwin Cup, with a motley collection of teams from all over the country competing. It’s now five-a-side and held indoors every February, with eight to ten teams. There’s no entry fee, Imperial College does the organisation and provides the space, and Neil Baldwin presents the trophy and makes a speech before everyone goes to the bar for some food and drink.

  Neil Mosley says:

  The teams who come are mostly teams with which Neil has some sort of association. Downing College, Cambridge, generally supplies a team. Quite often a team is there because Neil knows the Anglican vicar. One time we somehow had Stuart Pearce there, when he was England under-21 manager. Neil must have fixed that. Neil just said to me, ‘Stuart Pearce, he’s a very good friend of mine.’

  Neil Mosley does a wonderful Neil Baldwin imitation – even better than mine. He sums it up like this: ‘No one ever says no to Neil. He can get people together to say yes.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NEIL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: A TIME TO REAP

  NEIL

  In 2010 I celebrated fifty years at Keele. There was a party in the chapel, the NBFC played a match and there was a service of thanksgiving in the Keele University chapel, conducted by my old friend Jonathan Gledhill, the Bishop of Lichfield. It was a great honour to have Bishop Jonathan preaching, as I had known him ever since he came to Keele as a young undergraduate.

  It was the fourth service of thanksgiving I have had at Keele. Not many people have had that, have they? It was good to have it in the university chapel because I have been worshipping there all these years. I always worship at Keele, including Christmas Day. I have known thirte
en Anglican, fourteen Catholic and fifteen Methodist chaplains at Keele. They have all been very good to me. I help them with the services.

  The students produced a bone-china commemorative mug to celebrate it. It has a picture of me wearing a mitre on it, because my nickname is the Bishop of Keele. George Jackson produced it in his workplace in Stoke. The Lichfield Diocesan magazine, called Spotlight, had an article about it and called me ‘the new Bishop of Keele’. That was good, wasn’t it?

  MALCOLM

  The same year, Neil had a hip replaced. His mobility had been deteriorating for some time. His friend Laurence Wood from the chapel persuaded Neil to get something done about it. Tony Bartlett recalls taking Neil a supply of coloured card and crayons in hospital, from which he produced a large number of handmade thank-you cards. The Bishop of Stafford, Geoff Annas, as well as the Keele chaplains visited him in hospital.

  Bishop Geoff says:

  Like most clowns, I think Nello has quite a complex side to his nature.

  Like many others, I have my fair share of good stories: processing with other bishops down the nave of St Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey and watching as everyone speaks to Neil as they pass by; or his birthday party, where he famously ranted against David Cameron for introducing university fees and getting the students at Keele into debt and then in the next breath questioned why the same prime minister had not yet given him an OBE. But behind all of this I believe there is a very deep-thinking man who cares a great deal about others.