Neil Baldwin (Keele University)

Neil "Nello" Baldwin BEM (born 15 March 1946) is an honorary graduate of Keele University from Westlands in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. He is a registered clown and also worked for Stoke City Football Club, for whom he once played briefly in a friendly match. He is the subject of an award-winning BBC television drama, Marvellous, which was broadcast in 2014, and a play of the same name which was performed in London's West End in 2022.

Born to Harry and Mary Baldwin on 15 March 1946, he was diagnosed with a learning disability as a child and required speech therapy. Baldwin left school at age 16 to join Sir Robert Fossett's Circus, the oldest circus in England, for whom he performed as Nello the Clown for three seasons. He lived with his mother until a few years before she died in 2003. He is known to be acquainted with an Archbishop of Canterbury, the footballer Gary Lineker, and Prince Edward.

Since 1960, unasked and unpaid, Baldwin has visited Keele University, where his mother worked as a cleaner, to greet new students. A testimonial football match, on 12 March 2000, featured his own team of Keele University students (the Neil Baldwin Football Club, formed in 1967, whose president was Gary Lineker) against an all-star side of former Football League players including Lou Macari, Asa Hartford and Gordon Cowans.