This is the story of how a working class boy born into a family of 13 children grew up to revolutionise the world of betting and bookmaking. William Hill beat the odds by starting out as a teenage, one-man band before going on to launch a fixed odds football betting business that grew to a multi-million pound turnover before being almost taxed into extinction. Today, William Hill, whose first London office was opened in 1934, and staffed by just William and one clerk, is a truly global bookmaker, with over 2,500 betting shops and employing nearly 20,000 people.