Richard Ashcroft and then attended Winstanley College, where he met Nick McCabe. His teachers referred to him as "the cancer of the class", though one member of staff recalled him being "incredibly intelligent". Ashcroft was an avid football player, playing junior football for Wigan Athletic. For some time Ashcroft wanted to be a professional football player, idolising George Best, but as he grew older he lost interest in this, turning to music instead. Ashcroft formed The Verve (originally just Verve) in 1990 with McCabe, Jones, and Salisbury. The band signed to Hut Records and became well known for their appetite for both
Frances Ashcroft diabetes, and how drugs used to treat this condition exert their beneficial effects. Ashcroft has authored a few science and popular science books based on ion channel physiology: Ashcroft was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999. In 2007 Ashcroft was awarded the Walter B. Cannon Award, the highest honour bestowed by the American Physiological Society. She was one of five 2012 winners of the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science. Ashcroft was awarded an honorary degrees of Doctor of the University from the Open University in 2003 and Doctor of Science from the University of Leicester on