Farewell to Purpleman: Good Rabbits Gone obituary cartoonist Bertt deBaldock’s tribute to Mike Todd. Bertt is the nom d’artiste of Pyramid Gallery owner, curator and artist Terry Brett, who played host to Purpleman’s For The Love Of Purple exhibition in 2014
HIS love of the colour purple began on the family farm. “My first purple memories were of the purple potatoes,” he said. “As a six-year-old I envisaged myself as purple and I kept having that dream.”
A dream that would turn into street performer Purpleman, hitting his purple patch each day and staying there, motionless, as if turned to stone on Stonegate, as the commotion of shoppers passed by either side.
Purpleman would break out of that deep freeze, maybe to startle an unsuspecting tourist, or for a chat, quietly spoken, waspishly witty, putting the world to rights, as he did in his tireless fundraising on tyres, most memorably heading to war-torn Syria with vanloads of toys for children and food.
He was Purpleman, a character as colourful as his name, part of the street furniture of York, like George Leeman, Willam Etty or Emperor Constantine, and he was ahead of his time too, setting others in motion – although still, not moving – in other cities.
He never revealed his name in interview – he once referred to himself as “Sebastian” when curating his 2014 exhibition For The Love Of Purple at the adjacent Pyramid Gallery, but that was a red, or should I say purple, herring. It turns out he was Mike Todd, on his todd on his bike, perennially Purpleman.
He had left behind the “unhappy Yuppie corporate world” to become stationary, bike-riding Mr Windy City in 2001 before transforming into Purpleman in 2007, perpetually in a rush yet never moving from his pitch.
“I kept the windy look where I appear to be going fast but I’m actually going nowhere and finding inner calm when everyone around me is chasing happiness, but that happiness is just illusionary,” he once said. “If they just stopped, they could find it inside themselves.”
Purpleman became very possibly the most photographed cyclist in the world. “Well, maybe apart from Lance Armstrong, but it’s not always positive with Lance,” he said. Indeed so, but it was always positive with Purpleman, whether handing out paint brushes daubed with messages of love in the street or collecting his thoughts in his autobiography, I Am Purpleman, printed in what else but purple.
“It’s a book about love, positivity, overcoming obstacles and expressing unconditional love for strangers, and it comes from my purple heart because I used to be normal but I wasn’t happy,” he said.
Always Purpleman, never Yellowman, he famously declined the request to change to mark Le Grand Depart from York for 2014 Tour de France. “I’m going to ask Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme if the first stage winner could wear purple rather than the traditional yellow,” came his retort.
As opposed to Purple Rain’s Prince, whose favourite colour turned out to be orange, Purpleman will be forever in purple, forever in our memory, on that purple bike, looking as if time were against him, like Lewis Carroll’s Mad March Hare, but never leaving his purple patch, a living statue. How lovely it would be if York could honour him in similar fashion, a work of art for a man so full of heart.
Mike Todd, aka Purpleman, died suddenly on November 27 2025, aged 65.