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
Peggy Ashcroft desire to become a professional actress. Ashcroft was determined, however, and at the age of sixteen, she enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama, run by Elsie Fogerty, from whom her mother had taken lessons some years before. The school's emphasis was on the voice and elegant diction, which did not appeal to Ashcroft or to her fellow pupil Laurence Olivier. She learned more from reading "My Life in Art" by Constantin Stanislavski, the influential director of the Moscow Art Theatre. While still a student, Ashcroft made her professional stage debut at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in a