A gentle, unassuming man, Willcocks was renowned for his small acts of generosity. When an impoverished, but highly talented, Roy Massey (who went on to be director of music at Hereford Cathedral) enquired about the cost of lessons, Willcocks replied: “Let’s not bother about that. When I’m on the parish in my old age you can support me.” He was a popular adjudicator at music festivals around the world. On one occasion in Trinidad, in the West Indies, he found himself listening to steel bands that had arranged works such as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which they played on tempered oil drums. He later said: “I thought, 'I just don’t know how to judge these people’, so I judged them purely on the pleasure they gave me.” For an organist he had remarkably small hands, and was unable to span a tenth on the keyboard from thumb to little finger. He regularly beat Robert Tear, 20 years his junior, at squash.