Neil Baldwin, Celebrity

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book would not have been commissioned if the multi-award-winning BBC TV drama Marvellous, based on Neil’s life, had not been such an outstanding success. To adapt a line from Marvellous: ‘Acknowledgements, I wouldn’t know where to start.’ Or indeed to finish. But I’ll try. We thank the writer and executive director, Peter Bowker, for his brilliantly perceptive and funny script, which truly captured Neil’s spirit, so outstandingly portrayed on screen by Toby Jones, without which there would have been no film. His fellow executive director, Patrick Spence, managing director of Fifty Fathoms, part of the Tiger Aspect group, had the wisdom to see the potential of the film, and sell it to the BBC. He managed the whole process with sensitive professionalism. Patrick was the figurehead and representation of a brilliant directing, production, acting and publicity team, who have gained the professional recognition they so richly deserve, and who had Neil’s best interests at the heart of all their work. It seems invidious to selectively name and praise individuals here. Thank you all, guys, for a job superbly well done. Marvellous itself would not have been conceived and made without the article written about Neil in The Guardian in 2010 by our longstanding friend, Francis Beckett. But Francis’s contribution certainly did not end there. He conducted some of the interviews for the book, edited the whole text and drew upon his extensive experience as an author and journalist to provide invaluable advice on structure and content, and provided an introduction and afterword. Thank you so much, Francis. The book tells Neil’s extraordinary story, of which I have been privileged to be a part. But I have been only one of many. Over the years, Neil has had hundreds, nay thousands, of friends across the main domains of his life: his family; the church; Keele University; the circus world; Stoke City FC and the wider football world, and the Cambridge University Boat Club. Some of them have contributed directly to the book, and we thank them for their time and co-operation. Many others, only a few of whom are identified in the text, have helped and supported Neil, and he has equally enriched their lives. We extend our thanks to all who have done so, whether or not they are named in the book. You have all been important players in Neil’s story. The editor, Chris Mitchell of John Blake Publishing, and Andy Armitage, the copy editor, have provided invaluably professional input. Sheila Hayward turned my audio tapes into script with remarkable speed and accuracy. John Easom read and provided helpful comments on a draft of the book. Judge Nick Warren allowed me time off from my Information Tribunal duties to work on the book. Thanks to you all, and to anyone else I have inadvertently omitted. MALCOLM CLARKE To Dorothy ‘Mary’ Baldwin 1922–2003 A loving mother whose wisdom, courage and foresight were truly remarkable. Contents Title Page Dedication ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD BY FRANCIS BECKETT CHAPTER 1: NEIL’S FIRST CELEBRITY: THE ENGLAND FOOTBALLER WHO SIGNED HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE CHAPTER 2: NEIL IN THE SIXTIES: A TIME TO SOW CHAPTER 3: NEIL IN THE SEVENTIES: POLITICS, FOOTBALL AND THE BOAT RACE CHAPTER 4: NELLO THE CIRCUS CLOWN CHAPTER 5: THE STOKE CITY KIT MAN CHAPTER 6: MORE TIME TO SPEND AT KEELE AND LOOKING AFTER MUM CHAPTER 7: NEIL LEARNS TO LIVE ON HIS OWN CHAPTER 8: NEIL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: A TIME TO REAP CHAPTER 9: NEIL: THE BIOPIC CHAPTER 10: NEIL BALDWIN, CELEBRITY CHAPTER 11: THE PILGRIMS AFTERWORD BY FRANCIS BECKETT Plates Copyright FOREWORD By Francis Beckett It was one of those occasions the British film industry does well: a glittering preview at the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. Famous actors, footballers and politicians mingled with the crowds, and watched the new film for the very first time before applauding the stars as they walked on stage. Television presenter Samira Ahmed, who has fronted PM, The World Tonight and Sunday Morning Live, led the way, followed by the stars themselves: Toby Jones, Gemma Jones, Tony Curran, Greg McHugh, with writer Peter Bowker and director Julian Farino. They started to talk, but there was still a sense of expectation. Something was missing. Then a short, stout, late-middle-aged man walked on stage, using a walking stick because of a recent hip operation. His round face was covered by the widest and happiest smile we had seen for a while, and he spoke in a gravelly and curiously flat voice with a strong Potteries accent. He was wearing a dinner jacket, in stark contrast to the elaborately casual clothes of the metropolitan elite around him, but clearly didn’t feel at all overdressed. In fact, everyone else suddenly felt a bit underdressed, and Samira Ahmed said, ‘You’re the only person here who’s dressed properly.’ His name was Neil Baldwin, and the film was a fictionalised version of his life. It’s a name everyone now feels they know, but can’t quite pin down. Is he Neil Baldwin the cabinet minister, or Neil Baldwin the famous writer, or the actor or the talk-show host or the footballer, or the latest winner of Celebrity Big Brother? It has been like that for more than half a century. When eighteen-year-old Malcolm Clarke arrived for his first day at Keele University in 1964, a short, stout young man wearing a clerical collar came up to him and said, ‘Welcome to Keele. I’m Neil Baldwin.’ Fifty years later, Malcolm wrote, ‘I appreciated his warm welcome, but just who was he? As always with Neil, his exact status seemed uncertain.’ It was still like that in 2010, when I profiled him for The Guardian. The profile inspired the film Marvellous, which was broadcast in 2014. So who is Neil Baldwin, and why does he matter? To understand that, you have to understand his singular life, and in this book Neil and Malcolm, with a little help from me, guide you through it. Maybe, when you come to the end, you will feel you understand; and maybe not. But you will feel more optimistic, because that’s what exposure to Neil does. CHAPTER ONE NEIL’S FIRST CELEBRITY: THE ENGLAND FOOTBALLER WHO SIGNED HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE NEIL There’s two things I want to tell you at the start. First, I like to remember the happy things. I put nasty things behind me. And, second, you can get things by asking for them. I always do. I was born on 15 March 1946. Mum and Dad were both big Stoke City – or Potters – supporters, so they named me after Neil Franklin, who was the Stoke City centre-half in 1946. He was quite a player, Neil Franklin. He played for England twenty-seven times in a row and, if he hadn’t been silly enough to go to Colombia, he would have been the first player to get a hundred England caps. The day after I was born, Franklin turned out for Stoke City in an away game at Grimsby Town, which we won 2–0. I’ve been a winner ever since. My mum and dad even got him to write a message on the back of my birth certificate, too. It says, ‘With very best wishes from Neil Franklin, Stoke City FC and England.’ I’m very proud of that. Of course, I’ve got to know a lot more famous people since then. MALCOLM Neil was the only child of Mary and Harry Baldwin who were married in October 1944, when Harry, an engineering fitter, was thirty-one, and Mary was a few days short of her twenty-second birthday. They settled in a prefabricated bungalow in Chesterton, a working-class suburb of Newcastle-under- Lyme, the so-called ‘Loyal and Ancient Borough’ next to the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Mary didn’t have an easy pregnancy. One family story has it that, because of a fear that she might miscarry, she was given an injection she shouldn’t have had, which caused the ‘learning difficulties’ or ‘special needs’ that Neil was once labelled as having. We’ll never know for certain. But, if a clinical mistake was responsible for Neil’s total lack of the embarrassment, self-consciousness and fear of artificial social niceties that often hold most of us back from doing the things we want to do, then it’s not such a bad thing, is it? NEIL I don’t know anything about an injection, but I’m not worried about that. All I know is that I came out OK and I’ve had a great life and I’ve always been very happy. I’ve become a film star. Not many people have a film made about their life, do they? And I’ve got an honorary degree, which not many people have. MALCOLM Harry Baldwin, who was born in Wolstanton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, came from a North Staffordshire work ing-class family. His mother died when he was five. His father, Neil’s grandfather, Thomas Baldwin, was a miner who died when Neil was eleven. He lived just down the road from Neil in Chesterton, as did Neil’s great-uncle, Dan Johnson, his wife, Lilian, and his son, also called Dan. Uncle Dan recalls the family and Neil’s childhood: Harry was a fine chap but was very quiet. He was a singer in the local church choir, as was Neil.

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