John Batchelor (racing) - Early Life

Early Life

Batchelor was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, where he lived for a short period before moving to Surrey, Kent and Portugal due to his father's work. He received four O-Levels at school and had an exchange year in Oregon, United States, after which he sold insurance door-to-door in East Lancashire. He worked in this for nine months before selling cleaning products for five years, when he started "System Hygiene", a janitorial supplies company based in Accrington. He married Gillian in 1981 and the couple have had four children. He stood as a Common Sense Sick of Politicians candidate for Blackburn in the 1997 general election, coming in last place after winning 0.8% of the share with 362 votes. Following the election, through an open letter, he said "I extend my gratitude to the 362 voters in Blackburn who backed my campaign to take politics out of government. I would also like to point out that an additional 30,000 voters also offered me their support by being so sick of politicians that they abstained from voting at all. If we now add this figure to my votes and then subtract the votes of the 'winning' candidate it shows a 5,000-vote majority for those who are sick of politicians." "System Hygiene" was sold by Batchelor to business partner Robin Huddleston for what was described then as a "single digit millions of pounds" in 1999.