John became a messenger boy at the Manchester Post Office, but was sacked for talking back to his superior.

Moores was in a reserved occupation and did not have to be called up for military service but he volunteered for the Navy in 1917, as a wireless operator.

[4] In the early Summer of 1920 he was posted to their training school in Bixteth Street, Liverpool but after being taught to touch type, seventy to eighty words per minute and how to read cable slip, in November 1920, Moores was posted to Waterville in County Kerry, Ireland.

He complained about the food that was served at the Waterville Cable Company Station, whose function was to receive messages from the US and Canada and re-transmit them to London and Liverpool.

He established the Waterville Supply Company to order food from a variety of suppliers instead of just one, so was able to reduce costs and raise the quality of meals.

John, Colin Askham and Bill Hughes were friends who had worked together as Post Office messenger boys in Manchester.

It was whilst looking for a new money-making idea that Moores heard about John Jervis Barnard, a Birmingham man who had latched onto the public's growing passion for two things: football and betting.

In 1923, £50 was a huge sum to invest in what – based on Barnard's experience – was a precarious venture, and as Moores himself remembered: "As I signed my own cheque at the bank, my hands were damp.

A small office in Church Street, Liverpool, was rented and the first 4,000 coupons were distributed outside Manchester United's Old Trafford ground before one Saturday match that winter.

In 1927 Moores gave up working for the Cable Company but in April 1929, he was prosecuted under the Ready Money Betting Act 1920.

The breakthrough came when the owner of the coupon printing company Arthur Bottomes suggested that he took his exact expenses out (plus a bit extra) before calculating the winning payout.

In January 1932, Moores, who was by now a millionaire, was able to disengage himself sufficiently from the pools to start up Littlewoods Mail Order Store.

The idea may have come from the little mail-order firm Moores had started in 1921 in Ireland, and he knew that the enormous mailing list which pools had built up would be very helpful; but it was also inspired by the hardship and poverty prevalent everywhere in the bleak depression years at the beginning of the 1930s.

They researched and planned catalogues and helped to choose the merchandise, and Moores visited the United States to get information from big American mail-order firms such as Sears Roebuck and also Europe.

1942 saw aircraft parts and bridge pieces being manufactured and from 1943 the firm built storm-boats that could cross water and land on beaches.

[citation needed] In late January 1947, Moores fell ill and contracted meningitis – he spent two weeks in hospital.

He took out a five-year £1 million life insurance policy and put some of his shares in trust for his children (with various conditions – they were not allowed to sell the shares, his daughters received half as many as his sons in case they married as he did not want any men who were not family having influence over his business, and no child would have any shareholder power until they were 30 years old).

In June 1961 Littlewoods took over Sherman's Pools of Cardiff and Moores launched a sixth mail-order company, Peter Craig in 1967 in Preston.

[citation needed] He would remain as Everton chairman up to 29 July 1965, resigning due to the poor health of his wife, who died of cancer six weeks later.

[citation needed] In October 2009, Moores was posthumously inducted into the British Baseball Hall of Fame.

[citation needed] On 30 April 1970, along with his friend Bessie Braddock, Moores was made a Freeman of the City of Liverpool.

In 1972, he was made a CBE, going to Buckingham Palace to receive it on 14 November that year for his youth work and services to the arts on Merseyside.

The first John Moores exhibition was held in 1957, six years after the Walker Art Gallery re-opened after World War II.

Winning works have included classic paintings by Jack Smith (Creation and Crucifixion), William Scott, Roger Hilton (March 1963) and David Hockney (Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool).

Moores was critical of socialism, but in November 1935 he called for coal miners to be paid more money and for them to have better working conditions.

[9] Despite his Conservative views, he was a friend of the Labour MP Bessie Braddock and the two worked together on several projects involving Liverpool.

Moores had two operations, on his achilles tendon in May 1986, and then for an enlarged prostate in July 1986, but never fully recovered nor regained his health.

[citation needed] In May 1988, he attended his final ever AGM, but whilst there he began to struggle to speak and suddenly lost his thread.

[citation needed] Sir John Moores died at his home, "Fairways", at Shireburn Road, Freshfield, Formby, on Saturday, 25 September 1993, where he had lived since 1930.

A memorial service was held for him on 30 November 1993 in Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral attended by 2,000 people, 1,500 of them Littlewoods employees.