Neil Baldwin: Stoke's Zelig (or Forrest Gump)

There's a piece in today's Guardian on Neil, a local character who seems to know everybody in Stoke, from Vice-Chancellors to football managers (he even played for Stoke for a few minutes) - every city should have a Neil. Here are some extracts:

In his autobiography Macari calls him "my best-ever signing". Baldwin's unselfconscious remarks were a constant source of amusement for the players, and did wonders for morale. They never paid him properly as kit man, but have now given him free entrance to Stoke games for life. Baldwin says Macari is "a very nice man".

Most Anglican bishops have met Baldwin at least once. A keen churchgoer, he turns up at their homes for tea like an old friend, and, though a little puzzled, that's how they treat him.

As the 70s closed, Keele appointed a new vice-chancellor and Baldwin phoned Clarke, by then living in Manchester, to give him the news. "It's Professor David Harrison of Cambridge," he said, "and 'e's a very nice man." "A very nice man" is one of Baldwin's most frequently imitated phrases; he says it emphatically, and as though there's a D in the middle of "very".

"Do you know him then?" asked Clarke. "I've just had tea with him and his wife in Cambridge," replied Baldwin. Clarke now says, rather carefully: "I think Professor Harrison may have been under the impression Neil was the Anglican chaplain."

The late John Golding MP used to tell a story about how he walked into the House of Commons restaurant one night and saw Tony Benn, then energy secretary, at a table with Baldwin. Golding was a Keele graduate and MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, so he knew him well. Golding was also the Labour right wing's chief fixer, and he loathed Benn with a passion, so he left swiftly before either of them saw him. He never worked out how Baldwin had got the energy secretary to invite him to dinner.

He once sold a Keele rag magazine to then prime minister Harold Wilson and buttonholed the Duke of Edinburgh for a chat about world problems. He wrote on spec to an American oarsman who was in the Cambridge boat race crew one year, and got himself on board the official launch that followed the race and into the boat-race ball afterwards.

Generations of Keele students, including Stephen Benn, have played in the Neil Baldwin Football Club, of which he is the manager and captain, and in which he wins Player of the Year every year. Clarke calls it "a motley collection of students of the day, managed, coached, captained and kit-managed by Neil".