As a boy, he walked into Keele University – and never left. And he counts bishops, sportsmen and politicians among his friends. So just who is Neil Baldwin?

Last weekend, Keele University celebrated Neil Baldwin's 50th anniversary there. It was a splendid two-day affair, with speeches from distinguished alumni, a dinner, a testimonial football match, and a service of thanksgiving for his work conducted by the Bishop of Lichfield, a Keele graduate.

But Baldwin has never worked at Keele in any capacity, or been a student there, or had any formal connection with the place. He walked into the students' union in 1960, an engaging schoolboy with learning difficulties from the local town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and became a fixture. "I liked the campus and the chapel and the people," he tells me on the phone.

When, four years later, Malcolm Clarke walked nervously into the students' union on his first day at university, this stout, jovial young man ambled towards him and said: "Welcome to Keele. I'm Neil Baldwin." Clarke says today: "I appreciated his warm welcome, but who exactly was he? As always with Neil, his exact status was unclear."

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. At a thanksgiving in the Keele chapel a few years ago for Baldwin's work there, the visiting vicar recounted how he had first met Baldwin 20 years before, while at theological college in London. "He seemed to know all the bishops," he said.

Clarke became the student union president in the turbulent year of 1968, when Keele students occupied the registry. Clarke opposed the action and resigned as president over it, but not before proposing Baldwin for honorary life membership of the student union. For that, at least, he got unanimous support. I too was there in the late 60s and remember Baldwin as a solid if enigmatic figure. I'm pretty sure we first met in the union bar, late at night. In 1974, Clarke became mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and on the day of his inauguration, Baldwin sat beside him in the back of the mayoral Daimler, waving regally at puzzled bystanders.

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."

Baldwin's Keele student friends thought he was fantasising when he talked about his friendships with Kevin Keegan, Gordon Banks, Graham Taylor and other famous footballers, until one day a well-known member of the Stoke City squad dropped him off at the student union, having given him a lift home from an away game. When Clarke met the players, they told him they knew Baldwin well – but had doubted his stories of his friendship with the mayor of Newcastle.

Eventually, Baldwin became a regular fixture on the Stoke City team coach for away matches. He makes it sound terribly simple. "I met Lou Macari [Stoke manager in the 1990s and a former Scottish international] outside the ground and we got talking. He made me the team's kit man." It sounds as though it can't be true, but it's confirmed in Macari's autobiography, Football, My Life, which has seven pages about Baldwin. Macari treated him as a kind of mascot, getting him to dress up and sit on the touchline for the amusement and morale of his squad – once in a chicken suit, another time in full white tie and tails.

Macari, like Clarke, grew to love him. He and Baldwin were often seen together in Stoke, walking Macari's dog. And one day in 1993, during a friendly against Aston Villa at Villa Park, Baldwin's old friends among the Stoke supporters saw him, in full Stoke kit, warming up on the touchline. With five minutes to go in the match, Macari actually sent this rather overweight man of nearly 50 on to the pitch. The players on both sides and the referee must have been in on the plan, because Macari then had 12 players on the pitch – and the players passed the ball to Baldwin, who almost got a shot at goal.

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".

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.

It was quite simple. Baldwin had come to the House of Commons and put in a card for Benn saying, "Neil Baldwin from Keele – friend of Steve's." "Steve" was Tony Benn's son Stephen, and Baldwin was not making it up. Like many Keele graduates, Stephen Benn keeps in touch with Baldwin to this day.

Stories about Baldwin abound, and they are almost always true. 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.

"Neil's complete lack of self- consciousness has made him many genuine friendships with the famous," says Clarke. "People say he's a fantasist, but he isn't – he turns his fantasies into reality."

As a young man he had an unskilled job in the pottery industry in Stoke, and in the 80s he travelled as Nello the Clown in Sir Robert Fossett's circus. His other travels were aided by his habit of putting on a clerical collar before hitching lifts. His mother, Mary, used to worry about how he would cope after her death and sensibly made him move into his own flat; she died a few years ago, and Baldwin is managing.

People are always willing to help him, because, says Clarke "there's not an ounce of malice in him". Every generation of Keele students for 50 years has looked after Baldwin, and he in turn has enriched their lives with his extraordinary adventures. 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".

Now his footballing days are probably over. He is 64 this month and will go into hospital this year to have two new hips. He may continue to train his team, though. "I've always been grateful to the people at Keele," Baldwin says in his calm, gravelly voice with its strong Potteries accent. "The students have always been wonderful, they are still good friends to me."

Baldwin's old friend Malcolm Clarke now chairs the Football Supporters Federation and is the supporters' representative on the Football Association council. The two meet regularly at Stoke City matches.

Clarke and Keele alumni officer John Easom want the university to give Baldwin an honorary degree, as do many Keele graduates, including me. "He has contributed a lot more to the university than most people who get honorary degrees," says Clarke. For the moment the university establishment is resisting. Clarke has even bigger ambitions: he wants Baldwin to have an honour. He plans to petition Gordon Brown. It might just work. There could be votes in it. And it can only be a matter of time before I hear Baldwin say that "he's a very nice man".