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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have been commissioned if the multiaward-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.

Peter’s 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 cooperation. 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 invaluable 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

Summer 2015

For this revised and updated paperback edition, everything up to and including Chapter 9 in the hardback edition is the same. We have replaced the previous Chapters 10 and 11 and the Afterword with three new chapters and an appendix, which cover what has happened to Neil since the television film Marvellous was shown on BBC2 in the autumn of 2014. We look forward to the new play, based on this book, of the same name which, as I write, is due to open at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme, in the spring of 2021, depending of course on what happens with the COVID restrictions.

We repeat our heartfelt thanks to all of those mentioned in the acknowledgements above, to those who have contributed material for this edition and to all of those, too numerous to mention individually, who have continued (or in some cases started) to play a role in Neil’s life, be they from Keele University, Stoke City, the circus community, the Church, Neil’s latest and invaluable friends at the New Vic Theatre, or the many organisations that have invited Neil to their events. His remarkable story just goes on and on!

To the list of his supportive friends Vic and Helen Trigg, Tony and Irene Bartley, Jenny and Lawrence Wood (and their helpers), Lou Macari and David Brownsword, we add Elliott Lancaster, Roy Rushton, Sarah Gee from Keele University Students’ Union, and Val Mayers and family from the appropriately named Baldwin’s Gate Methodist Church, for their continuing personal support to Neil. To the many others who should also be on that list but aren’t, please accept our apologies, as well as our grateful thanks.

Once again I thank Francis Beckett and Lesley Clarke for their invaluable editorial advice, and on occasion for controlling my enthusiasm for irrelevant text, and Toby Buchan and Graeme Andrew of John Blake Publishing for their help in bringing this edition to print, as well as Justin Lewis for his careful and assiduous copy-editing. Grateful thanks, too, to David Brownsword, Philip Kempson, Andrew Billington and Keith Clarke for the use of photographs, and Greg of Greg Harding Photography, Sale, for his help with reproducing some pictures, as well as to the RAF for use of an official photograph.

We hope you enjoy Neil’s story as much as we have enjoyed writing it.

MALCOLM CLARKE