Marvellous: Neil Baldwin - My Story. Neil Baldwin
her daughter, Denise, Neil’s cousin, after Dennis, and, despite Iris’s lifelong attempts to find her twin brother, his sisters never saw him again. In 2012, after Iris and Mary had both died, a company of heir hunters who were trying to find the beneficiaries of Dennis’s estate tracked down Denise, who learned that Dennis had died in a hostel in Darlington in 2006.
Mary had a much better deal than the twins: she was sent to live with well-off relatives, first in a posh part of Birmingham and then at Prees in Shropshire, and had private schooling. Perhaps this partly explains the self-confidence she had in dealing with people from a variety of backgrounds, and her resilience, both qualities which she certainly passed on to Neil.
Her father eventually remarried, and I think she returned to live with him when she was aged about sixteen, and got a job as a silver-service waitress. Within about six years she was married. During the war she worked as an inspector in a munitions factory – of which there were several in North Staffordshire – which she enjoyed, and it seems most likely that she met Harry there. She gave the job up when she got married to become a traditional housewife at home.
NEIL
She was a marvellous mum who always looked after me well. It’s very sad that she lost contact with her brother and never saw him again and I had an uncle who I never met.
When I was thirteen, in 1959, I was taken ill with pneumonia, and I was off school for several weeks. It was quite hard coming back: I’d missed a lot of lessons and it wasn’t easy to catch up. But I was OK. They made me a prefect – I had to look after the little kids and try to be friendly to them. I liked doing that. I’ve always liked doing that.
Some of those kids still see me in town, in Newcastle-under-Lyme. They say, ‘Hey, Neil, I was at school with you.’ I heard the other day in town that one of the teachers there, Ron Stanton, was asking after me, and he’s eighty-one now. He was head of RE and he was always very nice to me. My parents were strong Christians, as well as Stoke City supporters, and so am I.
MALCOLM
Neil’s cousin Denise says:
When our Neil was young, my mother used to say to Mary, ‘Something’s not right: he’s not developing, not sitting up or walking when he should.’ But Mary would not accept that anything was wrong. Harry realised but he kept very quiet. It was only much later that Mary accepted that things were not quite normal, but she never let it affect anything and always believed our Neil could do whatever he wanted. And he has! The only label I have ever given our Neil is ‘cousin’, and the same goes for all the family. I just think of my mum, Mary, myself, and Neil as being very alike – never seeing the bad in people.
When I was a child we had so many lovely times with our Neil, who was so much fun for my sister Brenda and myself. He was in his teens but we were younger. When we went to Chesterton, we spent hours in the park opposite where they lived in Ripon Avenue, or, when they came here, we went to the Stanley Street park. Some of the local kids in Chesterton used to call him unpleasant names such as ‘spastic’, but it just never bothered him. Life never seems to bother him.
Denise’s sister Brenda recalls:
When we were children I spent a lot of time playing with Neil when we visited Auntie Mary and Uncle Harry. Neil was always so comical. He has no inhibitions. If he wants something he just asks for it. Auntie Mary was such a lovely lady. She was incredibly understanding of Neil, who always wanted to be a vicar.
Once, Neil ordered some cassocks. Mary rang up the supplier and said to them, ‘Just tell him they’re out of stock’ rather than destroy his dream. She was protective of him in a lovely way. She protected him but didn’t inhibit him. She was one of the kindest, most lovely people I have ever met. Uncle Harry was very quiet. I remember that he produced his own home brew and had two dogs, Trixie and Prince.
When Neil came to stay he would eat my mum out of house and home. He could almost eat a loaf before a meal.
Neil wanted to run off with the circus – which, as we will see, years later, he did. Paul Bartels remembers:
Once, after Gandeys Circus had been on the Timber Yard, as we called it, Neil went missing. It caused hassle in the village, and PC Ernie Ball and the rest of the police were trying to find him. It turned out he had followed the circus.
Denise also recalls these escapades:
Neil used to try to run away to the circus. When the circus was in town, he would just disappear during the day, but Mary knew where to find him: at the circus. I don’t know where his love of the circus came from.
When they came to Birkenhead, we used to re-enact the circus as kids, and Neil would always be the clown.
NEIL
And Denise was the acrobat.
MALCOLM
Brenda recalls that Neil occasionally had a difficult relationship with his granddad: ‘Granddad was a very strict man. He used to expect us all to sit still, but Neil didn’t like that. We were quite scared of him, but Neil wasn’t.’
Denise remembers that Neil’s love of the circus caused problems for the family at Christmas, because Granddad wouldn’t have the television on, and the circus was always shown on Christmas Day:
Granddad always came to our house at Christmas, but he had very fixed views and was very strict. The rest of us just accepted it, but poor Neil couldn’t adapt. Granddad insisted that the television should not be watched on Christmas Day and refused to have it on. But Neil was obsessed with the circus, which was always shown on Christmas Day, after Top of the Pops, which was on at 2 p.m., and wanted to watch it. He just couldn’t understand why the television couldn’t be switched on, and kicked up about it. Auntie Mary just tried to shut Neil up. Normally Mary used to let Neil do whatever he wanted.
Mum and Mary went out once and left Granddad in charge of Neil when he was about six or seven. Neil spent the whole time singing in the bedroom, and Granddad couldn’t make him be quiet. Granddad said he could never sleep again in his house because of his bad behaviour.
NEIL
My mum and auntie had gone off to the Battle of Britain celebrations. Granddad told me off for singing in the bedroom and said the bedroom is for sleep, not singing. But I liked my granddad. He’d been in the navy, which is why he had all those rules.
My dad and mum were very good parents. They taught me how to live properly and be nice to people. They looked after me, and they wanted me to be happy, and they took me to Stoke City and the circus and that’s why later on I went to Stoke City and the circus.
NEIL IN THE SIXTIES: A TIME TO SOW
NEIL
When I was fourteen, a student teacher called Dave Cox turned up at my school for a few weeks’ teaching practice. He was training to be a teacher at the local university, Keele. He and I got on pretty well, and he said, ‘Come along and visit me at Keele.’ So I did.
I came on the bus after school. It was March 1960, just after my fourteenth birthday. The campus was all covered in snow – the lawns, the lakes, the woods, everything. It looked marvellous.
I met Dave Cox in the Students’ Union. In those days the union was just a Nissen hut. They didn’t build the present union building until 1963. I sat down with Dave, we had coffee, then he showed me round, showed me the library and the big old building, Keele Hall, and I thought, I like this, I’ll come again. So I arranged with Dave Cox that I would see him next time, and he introduced me to some other students.
That first time I couldn’t get home because of the snow, so Dave Cox invited me to stay. He lived in one of the Nissen huts – lots of the students did in those days; they were left over from the war, with about six students in each one – and they had a spare bed in the hut. I rang my mum and told her where I was. My mum wasn’t worried – she always wanted me to be happy.