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CHAPTER ONE

NEIL’S FIRST CELEBRITY: THE ENGLAND FOOTBALLER WHO SIGNED HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE

NEIL

There are 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 working-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. Neil’s always been a good singer.

Some ignorant people in the area didn’t have much to do with Neil because they said he was slow. He was always polite and very respectful, which he got from Mary. If Neil ever crossed the line, Mary would firmly say, ‘Neil – that will do. No more.’

He didn’t ask for anything, but somehow before he left the room he would always get what he wanted, and that has carried on through his life – look at the autographs he’s got and the famous people he’s met.

NEIL

When I was about six, the teachers sent me to a speech therapist because my voice wasn’t working properly. I had to go to the hospital every week to learn how to speak. There was someone asking me questions and I’d have to answer. They wanted to get me to speak right.

I went for about two years and then it was all right and I didn’t have to go any more. There was no problem with reading. I was a great reader.

I went to the local primary school in Chesterton. It was in a very old building. I quite liked it. There was a teacher called Mr Dowler who was always very nice to me. Some of them weren’t nice to me, and I got into trouble sometimes.

They decided not to bother to sit me for the eleven-plus, and I went to Broad Meadow, the local secondary modern school. Uncle Dan still calls it the ‘college of knowledge’. Yes, of course there was a bit of bullying there, but I was all right, I stood up for myself.

MALCOLM

Neil was a friend of the late Gilbert Bartels, who was also regarded as having special needs. Gilbert’s brother Paul recalls:

Gilbert and Neil were like each other in many ways. Both of them always saw the best in people, even if they weren’t treated right. Because they were seen as being limited, they were picked on by the school bullies and had the mickey taken out of them by the local kids. It was quite a tough area to grow up in, but it didn’t seem to faze Neil.

I liked Neil because he always did what he wanted to do once he set his mind on something. Sometimes his mum had difficulty in stopping him if there was something he really wanted to do.

He was very involved with the local church even as a young boy. He used to wear a large wooden cross about five inches by three inches round his neck, which was a very unusual thing to do.

NEIL

You should never be afraid to proclaim your faith. Christ died on the cross for us.

MALCOLM

David Kelsall was a student teacher at Broadmeadow in 1959–60. He recalls:

The school had four streams, A, B, C and D. Neil was in D stream, and academically probably at the bottom of that. Their class teacher was Ron Cauldwell, who taught every subject. Ron was an inspirational teacher who had a really good personality for teaching, and a real commitment to help the less academically able kids. The school could be quite brutal but Ron didn’t use the cane like other teachers. Neil couldn’t have been in better hands.

Before I took the class, I remember Ron telling me, ‘Don’t worry about Neil. He’ll do his best and do what he can. He won’t cause you any problems.’ I just remember Neil as a really nice pleasant lad who was always smiling. He was always smart with a tie on and he often wore a green jacket.

NEIL

I remember David. He was very nice. Ron Cauldwell was a great teacher who looked after me. He taught our class for two or three years. Mr Toms was the headteacher and he was a nice man.

MALCOLM

David Leech, another local contemporary, who eventually went on to be the leader of the local council, also remembers the strength of Neil’s religious commitment. ‘Neil always walked round the village with a large Bible under his arm,’ he told me. Bert Proctor, three years Neil’s senior, also remembers Neil’s Bible and comments:

He would give you the impression that he had an official role with the church, but that was really due to innocent simplicity, not an attempt to deceive you. The clergy had no choice but to get to know Neil, because, once Neil had decided that it was worth getting in with somebody, he was always confident enough to do so. That came from his mum. It’s interesting that I remember her well but not his dad.

Neil knew everybody in Chesterton and everybody knew him. He was uncomplicated, with no hidden agendas and didn’t take offence. He became interested in and visited the churches and the university, whereas Gilbert did the same in the hospital. Today’s society with its concerns about security and other things wouldn’t be so accommodating. I worked in a butcher’s shop after I left school and Neil was also very interested in that.

Uncle Dan also recalls Neil’s early self-confidence:

He once asked me to phone Sandhurst to get him some application forms to join the military academy, which of course I did and he got the forms, but he became a clown instead.

His son, Young Dan, thirteen years Neil’s junior, recalls being taken to Stoke City as a young child by Neil:

We hung around for ages after the game getting players’ autographs. Neil coached me how to ask for autographs. He had no fear. Once, he just walked into the players’ bar. I was embarrassed and just wanted to get out but Neil wasn’t bothered at all.

Uncle Dan recalls family trips to West Midlands Safari Park at Bewdley in Mary’s car, when Neil was in his twenties and Young Dan was a teenager, but his boldness caused them worry: ‘Neil was always winding down the window in the lions’ enclosure, which frightened us all. He was obsessed with animals.’

Young Dan recalls that Mary’s driving added to the concern:

We were always scared Mary would stall the car whilst we were in a dangerous-animal enclosure and Neil would open the door. She had trouble finding the gears in her Renault 5. She wasn’t a very good driver. We used to go to the country, to Dovedale. I remember Neil just climbing right up the rocks with ordinary shoes on. He was fearless and had an amazing amount of energy.

NEIL

We Baldwins were a very close family. I used to see Uncle Dan and his family a lot because they lived just round the corner but for a long time I used to call him ‘Mr Johnson’ because no one realised until much later that my grandmother, who had died, was the sister of Uncle Dan’s father. Mum and Dad always taught me to be very polite to the neighbours. As well as Uncle Dan’s family, my granddad lived just down the road from us in Chesterton as well as my Uncle Eddie, who was also very good to me. Everyone lived nearby and I had a very happy childhood. I have always loved the trips to the safari park and the country. They were marvellous.

I had some good friends. I wasn’t bullied at school and I never used to worry about what some of the other kids in Chesterton said to me. I took no notice. That happens to everyone. I was very happy and I still am and have always been proud to be a Christian.

MALCOLM

Mary had been born in October 1922 in Birkenhead. Her mother, Sarah, died in 1929, aged thirty-four, after giving birth to five children in five years, one of whom died in childbirth. Mary, the second of four surviving children, was only seven. So both Neil’s parents had suffered the loss of their mothers at a very early age.

NEIL

Because he was in the navy my granddad couldn’t cope with looking after my mum and her two sisters and one brother and the family was split up.

MALCOLM

Mary’s sister Iris and Iris’s twin brother Dennis were sent to an orphanage, where they suffered some cruel treatment. Dennis eventually became an alcoholic and moved away. When he did return, on one occasion around 1970, Neil’s granddad disowned him and wouldn’t even tell him where his sisters were living. Iris named 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.