Michael George Williams (1941-2023)

Mike was born in Barnsley and like, Mike Parkinson, Dickie Bird and Geoffrey Boycott -and despite  Welsh origins –  was a ‘professional Yorkshireman’.

His father was manager of the Rock cinema, Cudworth, where Michael Parkinson misspent some of his youth. It was rumoured that they showed so many Westerns the two back rows of seats had to be replaced with saddles.

Mike actually grew up in a place called Burton Grange, situated just a couple of miles from Cudworth. It was in this village that much of the movie Kes was filmed.

After leaving school he became a police cadet but when the world outside beckoned, he left and signed up for five years in the RAF – In 1963 whilst on a posting to Cyprus, he found himself in the middle of the shooting match the night the civil war erupted.

He was employed as an aircraft electrician and eventually eventually emerged unscathed at the end of 1964.

Back in civvy street, after working in Barnsley factories as a maintenance electrician, he became a newsagent and was sent to manage a shop in Hartlepool and in 1975 he was transferred to Forbuoys branch on Grantham’s New Beacon Road.

For a couple of years he was landlord of the Joiners Arms (since renamed Nobody Inn), attracting the town’s top darts players. He still has a box full of trophies for his own efforts at the oche.

In 1984 he returned to his trade as a service engineer, mainly on industrial photo-electric safety guards, travelling worldwide.

Even after he retired, he still kept his ‘big shed’, a workshop where he spent most of his time wondering where he will put his spare parts collection if he stayed at home.

He hit the headlines in 1972 by walking the near-1,000 miles from Land’s End to John O’Groats, via Barnsley, raising £3,000 for the Spastic Society towards a holiday home in Chapel St Leonards.

He joined the Labour Party in about 1990 and in 1997 won a seat on South Kesteven District Council in a by-election, taking Harrowby ward with just 4.4 per cent of the possible vote. He left the party and became an independent and after 14 years was surprisingly defeated by the three Labour candidates at the 2011 elections.

During his spell in politics, he was also elected on to the county council for Grantham South and Harrowby.

He was twice Mayor, in 2000-1 and 2004-5. As well as being his Mayoress, his wife Avril was also Mayor in her own right, in 2008-9.

This was in addition to being school governor at Grantham Church School and Ambergate, on the Town Centre management partnership and East Midlands in Bloom committee and chairman of Harrowby Community Forum and  a member of the board at Grantham College.

After several years in retirement, restricted due to walking difficulties, he died just days after his wife Avril’s funeral, which he was too ill to attend.