Pirate Club’s leader, Giles Higgitt, was a real treasure

TRIBUTES have been paid to a charity worker who was known by friends and colleagues as the “Mother Theresa of Camden Town” – a man who spent his life looking out for others. 

Giles Higgitt, who worked for the children’s charity The Pirate Club at the Pirate Castle near Camden Lock, passed away last week from cancer, aged 55.

Thousands of young people have benefited from days spent at the canal-based watersports centre he helped run for more than 25 years. 

But Mr Higgitt, who believed there was no such thing as a dysfunctional child, just a dysfunctional society, did much more than run the Pirate Club. Friends recall him speaking on behalf of young people at court hearings, persuading judges that a few days in his charge in a kayak would help them with behaviour issues. He was almost always right.

Mr Higgitt grew up in Hampstead, the son of eminent eye surgeon Alan Higgitt. His own education was interrupted as a child: he had a series of brain tumours, and the operations and recuperation interrupted his education until he was in his late teens. It was then that he went to Kingsway College to take O-levels. Afterwards, he found work as a stage manager at West End Theatres. 

But Mr Higgitt’s calling was in caring for others. He trained as a teacher at the Langtry nursery school in Kilburn until a meeting in 1983 which would change his life – and hundreds of others.

He had helped pilot a narrowboat from Birmingham to Camden Town, and while doing so met Viscount St David, the man who set up the Pirate Club on the Regent’s Canal. He realised Mr Higgitt had something special to offer and asked him to skipper their narrowboat, the Pirate Princess. Gradually he took on the running of the youth charity.

Jim Marshall, who worked with him on the canals, recalled how on numerous occasions he sought to catch a black cab from outside the Pirate Castle to take him to Paddington where he would get a train to his home in Devon. 

Cabbies would ask if he worked there with Mr Higgitt – and then waive the fare as either they or their children had benefited from days at the club.

Mr Higgitt’s interest in boats started at an early age. His father had built one in their front room, and would take his child on jaunts in his yacht. It also helped Mr Higgitt escape his medical problems. For a time he had his legs in iron supports that limited movement, and he would daydream about voyages to faraway lands. 

Mr Higgitt also helped set up a scheme for ­people to trace missing and lost relatives. Called Bloodties, he and his partner Louise would help people research the whereabouts of family members.  

He helped young people become confident, and scores of people find work on the canals. But above all, his life was spent helping others get out of the house, to have a good time and learn new things.

• A wake to celebrate the life of Giles Higgitt will be held at the Pirate Castle on February 2 from 5pm onwards.
DAN CARRIER