John Rankin Mills was born in Liverpool in 1975. He grew up in the suburb of Walton and quickly formed a love of Liverpool F.C. which still persists today, this despite two seasons in a row which included a cold Boxing Day away trip to Middlesbrough.

John’s second love is for crown green bowling a sport he has played since the age of 11. He was part of the Merseyside Junior team which won the County Championship in 1991. He has played for St Francis De Sales, Walton Park, Stanley Park, Royal Excelsior and Sylvestrian bowling clubs in Liverpool and currently plays in Burscough for Burscough Cricket Club and Burscough Royal British Legion.

At age 16 John joined a local hospital radio station, Sunshine Radio, and was soon its Programme Controller before leaving for Dundee to study Radio Broadcasting. John has done bits and bobs of presenting, producing and writing for radio in places such as Dundee, Liverpool, Wrexham and Manchester and has helped to found community radio stations across the UK such as Wave 102, Salford City Radio and Lache FM. John has also worked in a variety of community development and social regeneration roles across the North West.

John also did some TV presenting on a very early and little watched internet TV channel, hosting a show about sport.

Starting right back in his early years, John has always had a love of writing and the use of language. He has written jokes and one-liners for other radio presenters as well as once writing stand-up for a then newbie female comic. His take on it is that the routine went down OK apart from a few bits which was all down to the delivery as opposed to the quality of the writing!

John has ventured in and out of the conference speaker circuit, waxing lyrical about tackling poverty, community media, neighbourhood working and communications.

In 2008, whilst working in Chester John led his team to win the National Neighbourhood Management Team of the Year Award.

John loves Angel Cake.

John once sat next to Michaela Strachan at a bar in Bootle.

John has been an extra in Brookside.

John was originally cast to play “Dec” in “Ant and Dec” but was deemed to be “too tall” and “not Geordie enough” eventually losing the part to Declan Donnelly.

John is an avid twitter user and has resided in Ormskirk for the last decade with his wife Jenny, their 2 daughters and 2 cats. When not tweeting, bowling or watching LFC John enjoys the theatre, particularly the Royal Exchange in Manchester, curry, comedy, all things media, wrestling, gaming and devouring useless information!

John says:

“Enjoy the blog, which may or may not contain elements of what you have just read above. I promise not to talk about myself in the 3rd person again, such as I did in what you have just read above in a pathetic attempt to fool nobody into believing someone would actually write any sort of biography about me in the first place.”

– John Rankin Mills 2014