Life and times of Gordon Foster, church organist, choirmaster and football hack

But then not many people are like 79-year-old Rainworth man Gordon Foster, who has been reflecting on his time as church organist and choirmaster, sports reporter, grassroots football enthusiast, community stalwart and all-round good egg.

The memories came flooding back when Gordon and his wife, Joan, travelled to York Minster to meet the new King at a Maundy Thursday service.

The monarch presented him with Maundy money, symbolic silver coins, to mark his 50 years as organist and choirmaster at Rainworth’s St Simon and St Jude’s Church.

A half-century that included the day when he played at his daughter Helen’s wedding in Bristol, and the service was taken by a Dr Rowan Williams, a friend of her husband Francis, but also the then Archbishop of Canterbury.

As for Wembley, well Gordon cannot profess to have graced the turf at the home of English football, but it was Rainworth Miners Welfare’s run to the FA Vase final there in 1982 that triggered his love for non-league football and led to a dramatic career change.

“One Saturday, I was playing the organ at a St Simon and St Jude wedding,” he recalls. “When it was over, I nipped across to watch the second half of Rainworth’s Vase tie against Frecheville, of Sheffield. Instantly, I felt it was the club I wanted to belong to.”

Gordon was among the thousands who flocked to Wembley, where Rainworth lost 3-0 to Forest Green Rovers. Within a couple of years, he had joined the club’s committee and was editing their matchday programme.

When a sports reporting vacancy at your Chad arose in 1989, he jumped at the chance, fancying a change from his career as an Ashfield Council housing officer.

“The editor, Jeremy Plews, said it would be £1,000 a year less than I was on at the council,” Gordon remembers, “but Joan said if I didn’t do it, I’d regret it. We managed things so the family income wouldn’t suffer. The job was much more enjoyable than the housing office.”

Gordon went on to spend 20 happy years at the Chad, covering non-league action in the area, notably at Alfreton Town.

The only downside was the job restricted his commitment to Rainworth, but he continued to edit the programme until 2013 and still watches regularly.

Gordon says the switch to the Chad was”the best move I ever made”, and as defining as a similar one he had undertaken 16 years earlier when he first took up his role at St Simon and St Jude.

For seven years, he had been the organist at Huthwaite’s Sutton Road Methodist Church, where Joan was a member. They married in 1965 and have two children, Lisa, now aged 56, and Helen, 54 and a Church of England priest.

“I didn’t need to move,” Gordon says, “but an advert appeared in the Chad for an organist and choirmaster at Rainworth and a friend told me how good the organ was.”

Before he knew it, he found himself being “subtly interviewed” for the post by the vicar, the Reverend John Fern, who eventually persuaded him to accept.

“It was a wrench to leave but, not long afterwards, the three Methodist churches in Huthwaite consolidated into one at Sherwood Street, where they already had a good organist, so I’d have lost my job anyway.”

Some might call it fate. Gordon, for whom his faith has been important since his days as a young boy from a churchgoing family in Welbeck, points instead to the guidance of God.

Divine intervention has possibly nurtured his love-affair with the organ too. Interest has been there since the age of eight when he started piano lessons, and he later graduated to the harmonium, but he rarely took interest in practising and has never had any kind of music exam.

“However, at one church Sunday school service when I was 14, there was no-one to play and someone remembered I’d had piano lessons, so I stepped in,” recalls Gordon.

“From there, I joined a youth club in Sutton, where they had a pipe organ. The organist, Mrs Marsh, fascinated me. When she played, it was fabulous and I thought, ‘I want some of this’. That was my motivation to take up the pipe organ.”

Within months, he started going out with Joan and was soon on her chapel’s assistant organists’ rota. The rest is history.

Along the way, Gordon has received inspiration from the “wonderful” Donald Weston, former Sutton Road choirmaster, who “could spot a wrong note at 1,000 paces”. He has received a few lessons from Malcolm Cousins, renowned former organist at Mansfield’s St Peter’s Church, and been on the occasional Royal School of Church Music course.

But by and large, he is self-taught, which has included overcoming personal obstacles, as well as musical ones.

“Taking over as choirmaster meant training the choir and taking practice, which was difficult for me because I’ve always been diffident and shy,” Gordon explains.

But, unlike many others which bit the dust during the Covid-19 lockdowns, the choir is still going strong.

And both Gordon and Joan, 77, a choir member for 46 years, have received the prestigious Bishop’s Award for services to church music.

The acclaim of your peers can be as gratifying as awards, though, which is why Gordon was overwhelmed by a special service at St Simon and St Jude to mark his 50th anniversary.

At one time, he feared he would not reach the milestone after a prostate cancer scare four years ago. “But my consultant said, ‘you’ll do that, no problem’,” he says.

“The service was fabulous. A full church turned up.

“One of my big things has been encouraging others, whether in church, at work or in football, so it was pleasing to see two ladies, Clare Harris and Elaine Hughes, who I have started to encourage to play the organ, perform in public for the first time.”

Whisper it gently, but it is conceivable Clare will, one day, take over the hot seat. However, Gordon stresses that is “a long-term aim”. He has no plans to move aside just yet, not while he is fit for a king.