Multi-award-winning singer-songwriter Richard Thompson OBE has written a song about Thameslink’s oldest employee, 85-year-old Elstree & Borehamwood station assistant Siggy Cragwell BEM.
The special track about Siggy, from Hampstead in London, is one of five commissioned by BBC Radio 2 to tell the stories of people whose lives have been influenced or changed by trains. It aired on national radio last month.
Together, the five songs make up a week of folk music, entitled 21st Century Folk, which this year celebrates the 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railway – Railway 200.
Siggy came to Britain as part of the Windrush generation in 1962. He started work the very next day after his ship docked in Southampton and has been delivering excellent customer service on the railway ever since.
He has received two lifetime achievement awards: one by popular vote in his local north London community, and a BEM for his services to the railway. He previously played cricket for the England over-70s, and still regularly takes wickets from players in their 20s.
Siggy said: “It’s such an honour to have this song written about me. I could never have dreamed when I came to this country that I’d still be working for the railway 63 years later and be receiving all these accolades.”
Like Siggy, Richard is cricket mad and the song he composed was recorded with Siggy’s cricketing colleagues on backing vocals at their club, Holtwhites-Trinibis.
Richard said: “It was fascinating to meet Siggy and learn of his life on the railway with Thameslink. Recording this song about him at his cricket club has been great fun.”
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