[1] Raised in Saddleworth, he left Hulme Grammar School at 15 and worked in a woollen mill[1] before gaining employment in local papers in Yorkshire and the North West.
He was a sub-editor on The Daily Telegraph by 1969,[2] but entered higher education in 1976 when he began a degree at Manchester University in American Studies and political philosophy, but left after an attempt to drop the former subject was rejected.
[3] Developing a positive professional relationship with Richard Desmond, after he had taken over Express Newspapers, led to a television advertising campaign, new sections, and the poaching of a football writer Brian Woolnough from The Sun whose salary at £200,000 was greater than Hills.
"[6] One story the newspaper covered during Hill's tenure landed the publication with a successful claim for damages,[8] the paper's insistence that the parents of Madeleine McCann were responsible for their daughter's disappearance and other defamatory articles finally numbering about a hundred.
[9][10] According to Nick Fagge, a former Express journalist who gave evidence at the Leveson Inquiry, Hill was unconcerned with the accuracy of McCann related stories, so long as they managed to "sell papers".