Today there will be a service in the Keele University chapel, led by former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, to celebrate Neil Baldwin’s 76th birthday. Last night a play about Neil’s life opened in the innovative local theatre the New Vic in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.
But who is this Neil Baldwin? A top politician, or elite athlete, or concert pianist or footballer? No, this is Neil Baldwin the legend – a legend that I and this newspaper helped create. Neil turned up on the Keele campus in 1960, an engaging local schoolboy with learning difficulties who liked the place and kept coming. By 1964 he was there on the first day of the new academic year to greet new students cheerfully: “Welcome to Keele. I’m Neil Baldwin.” Some say he was wearing a dog collar – he certainly wore one later on, when he hitch-hiked around the country.
One of those 1964 newcomers was Malcolm Clarke, who was glad of Neil’s warm welcome, but wondered what his official role was. He didn’t have one. But generations of Keele students have cared for him, admired him, and learned about life from him. Clarke was one of the first: he and Neil have been friends ever since, going together most Saturdays to watch the local football team, Stoke City, where in the 1990s the then manager Lou Macari made Neil a sort of mascot for the team.
He had a spell as a circus clown, and he took to visiting top politicians and bishops and archbishops. Once they got over their surprise, they took him to their hearts.
That’s how Rowan Williams got to know him. Neil heard that the former archbishop, by then Master of Magdelene College, Cambridge, was due to speak at Keele. He talked his way into the dinner afterwards and on to Rowan Williams’s table, and explained that he often visited Cambridge with his football team (the Neil Baldwin Football Club, a Keele institution now). Williams said politely that Neil must visit him when in Cambridge, and Neil instantly whipped out a notebook for Williams to write down his address.
Neil did visit, frequently, and the two are such firm friends now that Williams is travelling to Keele from his Cardiff home to lead today’s service, and will go to the theatre afterwards.
In 2010 I profiled Neil for this newspaper, and my article inspired the television film Marvellous about his life, with Toby Jones as Neil, which won three Baftas. Then there was a biography, written jointly by Neil and Malcolm Clarke.
After that, the world seemed to beat a path to Neil’s door. Keele University gave him an honorary degree, and asked him to keep the news to himself until it was officially announced, so Neil told only his friends – but he has a lot of friends, and it’s unlikely the announcement came as a surprise to anyone. These friends then lobbied the honours system, and in 2019 Neil was awarded the British Empire Medal.
Neil has loved it all. His beloved mother, Mary, used to worry about how he would manage when she was no longer there to look after him, but he has obeyed her last instruction: he has been happy. In a straightforward, unpretentious way he has loved the limelight. “I’m even more famous now,” he told me after the film was made. It was just a statement of fact, unmediated by the false modesty that would have made most of us say it differently.
But I suspect the New Vic’s production will bring him more happiness than any of it, partly because it’s his local theatre and the company took him to their hearts, but mainly because this time he was a key part of the creative team – there’s a real sense that the show is his work.
“I chose Michael Hugo to play me,” he told me, and it’s true – or at least, he recommended Hugo, a regular New Vic performer, to director Theresa Heskins after seeing the multitalented actor in the New Vic’s adaptation of The 39 Steps. “I could see at once he was right for the part,” Neil added. He’s delighted with the result. “Michael is fantastic,” he told me. And “he’s a very nice man” – Neil’s highest accolade, which he also bestows on Rowan Williams.
Neil participated in the creation of the show at every stage, and is jointly credited as writer alongside Theresa Heskins. “Almost all the words are Neil’s. I’ve been more like an editor,” said Heskins. He’s ensured that his two favourite hymns are in – How Great Thou Art and The Church’s One Foundation. What’s his favourite bit of the play, I asked? “All of it,” said Neil.
Neil is so pleased with the show that he has, he told me, splashed out £320 on a three-piece suit for the occasion, including a £30 waistcoat which he managed to buy for only £6. The suit had its first outing at Thursday’s dress rehearsal, where I watched the show with him. Heskins has created a fast-moving gallop through Neil’s life, with song and dance and pantomime and clowning and much else besides.
And alongside it all, she may have found some new insights into what makes Neil Baldwin special. He does not, she says, make the usual distinction between people laughing with him and people laughing at him. And that, she seems to argue, is one of his greatest strengths.
• This article was amended on 14 March 2022. An earlier version placed the New Vic theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, rather than Newcastle-under-Lyme.
