John Bradford left Mercers' School after 2 years in 1958, aged 13, having distinguished himself with a runner-up (no less!) medal at the 1958 school sports day, and went on to Haberdashers.  He took maths and physics A levels in 1962, but didn't get a university place to read maths, as he wanted, so went to what is now Brighton University and took a degree in Building, as he had a connection with a family building firm in London.  He turned up with his shiny new degree and was asked if he knew anything about bookkeeping (which he did), because they'd just sacked the bookkeeper for fiddling the books.  So he ended up an accountant, qualifying in 1976 by correspondence course and spent the next 25 years as the finance man in the construction industry, ending up with his own joinery manufacturing business that went bust in the early nineties.  From there, he moved into the charity sector as a freelance, in further education, in careers advice, a legal charity, a children's charity, in an eye hospital, a Palestinian grant-funding charity and in an AIDS hospital.  These included working at different times in East Africa, Jerusalem and The Gambia.  In the middle of all that, his wife and he took a gap year and backpacked around the world, during which he grew a pony tail.
He retired, rather traditionally, on his 65th birthday, in anticipation of which, he'd contacted Howard Worth to find out if the OMC still existed, who pestered him until he joined.  In retirement, he's taking a maths degree at the Open University and researches his family history.
He has an older brother who was at Mercers from 1954 - 1958.  He married in 1974, to Lucia and they have two children and two grandchildren.