John James ‘Gibbo’ Gibson
JOHN James “Gibbo” Gibson was a Kentish Town legend – a Camden Council caretaker who looked after estates in NW5, he earned the love and respect of all those who knew him.
Gibbo, who has died aged 78, was an artist, a gardener, dog lover and weightlifter whose dedication transformed the back gardens of Gaisford Street into an urban Eden, while his kindness and compassion made him a figurehead for his community.
Born in Hinckley, Leicestershire, in 1947, his father James was an amateur boxer and worked in a shoe factory, his mother a care assistant in an older persons home.
In his childhood he was surrounded by the budgerigars his father bred – including a rare black and white one. He had two siblings – his brother Tony, and half brother Keiran. Gibbo left school and joined the merchant navy. He sailed twice around the globe, saying his favourite place to call was Jamaica.
Gibbo’s hair turned grey at an early age and claimed it was the result of an electrical storm at sea. He had a host of sailor-inspired tattoos, including two eyes inked on his bottom. He met his wife Sammy when he was 17 in Swiss Cottage. She worked there for an insurance company, and in 1972 they had a daughter, Claire.
Gibbo, who also worked as landscape gardener, became a caretaker of Kennistoun House, Leighton Road, where they lived before moving to Gaisford Street.
He would later put a Mongolian yurt in his garden where he would meditate: his down time was also filled with making models, painting murals and a collection of “shadow” images by shining light on plants and painting around the shadows he had created.
His daughter Claire recalled being pedalled around the streets of Kentish Town in a basket on the front of a butcher’s delivery bicycle.
He would also reward her with the odd day off from school for “good behaviour,” which meant a day at home being taught how to play chess and cribbage, games of marbles and long walks on the Heath with one of the many dogs he made part of his family.
At one point he had three eye-catching Great Danes: Jazz, Bugsy and Fiona. Claire would also recall how he instilled a fierce self-belief, telling her she could be a helicopter pilot or drive a tank if that’s what she wanted to do.
Gibbo cycled everywhere and never drove: later, when he would ride a mobility scooter about – or his Wheels of Fire, as he dubbed it – friends and family said that was about as far as being put in charge of a moving machinery he could be trusted with.
However, he would recall owning a BSA Bantam motorbike in the 1960s, though no photographs of him astride the machine exist.
Money was never a motive. Claire remembers how pocket money was based on whatever she could find around the house was hers to keep.
She remembered him once producing a five pound note and saying she could have half of it – and then tore the fiver into two, while giggling away.
Friends recall how Gibbo went the extra mile for those whose homes he looked after: he helped young people, was known for fixing bikes and then teaching youngsters in Gaisford Street how to ride them.
He became something of a surrogate father to a neighbour, Marcus O’Sullivan, who spent happy years as a teenager in Gibbo’s home in Kennistoun House, Leighton Road. Gibbo had a sweet tooth – he loved treacle tart – and a favourite meal was lamb and spinach curry with a stuffed paratha from The Spice in Tufnell Park. He liked to lift weights, and loathed football.
He said he was the founding member of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Balls – and knew every sailor’s knot.
He loved Sixties rock and blues, the likes of Hendrix, Steve Miller and The Moody Blues.
His kindness and compassion had a lasting effect on those who met him.
Gibbo’s funeral is at 9.30am on February 27 at Islington Crematorium, East Finchley, with a wake at the Pineapple Pub, Leverton Street, from noon.
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