JOHN Paine, 52, has won a Pride of Swindon award for his work on the Penhill Community Association’s Build-a-Bike scheme at the Chippenham Close Community Centre. The scheme gives young people the opportunity to create and customise their own machines at very little cost. Dad-of-four John lives in Penhill and is married to Beverley.

LIKE a lot of people who do good things for their communities, John Paine isn't overly comfortable with acclaim.

He's touched by his Pride of Swindon award, but glad he didn't have to make a speech.

“It’s nice to be recognised," he said, "but I don’t do it for the awards.

“I just like making people happy.”

Get him talking about bikes or the importance of community, though, and he's a lot more relaxed.

John volunteered with Build-a-Bike last year. His mechanical aptitude and charity work had brought him to the attention of Penhill Community Association secretary Clare Foreman.

John saw an opportunity to divert the energy of bored young people into something productive.

"It gives them something to do and it’s inspired a couple of them to want to be mechanics when they grow up.

"They actually have something themselves that’s not going to cost a fortune.

“At the end of the day they get a nice, roadworthy BMX to ride and to say: ‘I’ve fixed that myself.’

“It’s seeing what you can make out of scrap. At the end of the day, when you’ve finished it, you’ve made something that hasn’t cost an arm and a leg, and is just as good if not better than one from a shop."

As if motivating young people were not enough of a boon, there are also environmental benefits.

“If one day somebody bought a bike for two or three hundred pounds and it ends up being thrown away, if we can stop it from being thrown away and give it another ten or twenty years extra life, that's good.”

John is from Shoreham-by-Sea in West Sussex, and is the seventh of 11 children born to a long distance lorry driver dad and a factory worker mum. His father was an adept mechanic.

“He’d always involve us in repairing his car – this was from the age of six, more or less – and doing a bit of DIY. We never did gardening because that was mum’s thing!

“My dad got me into bikes at roughly the age of eight.”

A lifelong enthusiasm for riding, buying, trading, restoring and repairing the machines was born.

Over the years he has built hundreds of bikes. Some have been sold for affordable prices and many given away to needy people who couldn't afford to pay anything.

While still at school, John made enough money from repairing neighbours' machines to buy a Holy Grail of 1970s young people's bikes, a five-speed special edition Raleigh Chopper. He later traded it for another dream machine, a 21-speed Peugeot racer.

“I actually got cautioned by the police for speeding on Shoreham flyover. I was doing fifty-something downhill. Bear in mind that I was a lot fitter and thinner!”

John and his friends would take heavier machines mountain biking on the South Downs, years before mountain biking became a global phenomenon.

The mechanically-minded young man was helping out at a garage in his spare time while still at school, but later an apprenticeship there ended when the boss went bankrupt.

John found work in warehouses, eventually specialising in car parts.

Moving to Jersey, where his brother was staying, John married and became a father of two, but the marriage foundered. His second wife, Beverley is from Swindon. The two are together thanks to Friends Reunited, having first met in 1979 when their families holidayed on the Isle of Man. They married a decade ago.

John accepted redundancy last year, having developed osteoarthritis in his feet and developed tendon and ligament problems in a knee. He aims to return to work following treatment.

His community work began in earnest about three years ago when he saw a Facebook appeal posted by a Swindon homeless shelter and delivered some items.

“I was speaking to a homeless guy who’d walked down from Liverpool. It was when we had the bad snow and he said he just decided to head south – him and his mate who was Polish.

"They had thirty quid to their name and had to split dinners everywhere they went."

The Liverpudlian mentioned that a bike would help him seek work, and John obliged. John went back to the shelter a few weeks later.

"He’d gone because he’d got a job and somewhere to live. He’d bought himself a decent bike for transport and gave the bike back to the homeless shelter so somebody else could use it.

"Just because people are homeless, it doesn’t mean they’re lazy."

John also became involved with the Freya Foundation (thefreyafoundation.co.uk), an organisation set up by an acquaintance whose daughter has Pyruvate dehydrogenase deficiency (PDH). The condition causes a build-up of lactic acid in the body and produces a variety of neurological problems

His bike-building talents to the fore once more, John began selling his machines for the cause, and has so far raised £300.

He still gives away some of his bikes, such as the one which went to a charity shop volunteer whose own had been stolen, leaving the man without the transport he needed.

“Passing it forward, it’s called,” said John.

He welcomed the Build-a-Bike opportunity because it allowed him to revisit his earliest days as a bike-maker and pass on some of his experience. So far there have been 20 participants.

Frames and parts are donated and would often otherwise end up in skips.

"There’s no reason why every community in Swindon couldn’t get it done in some way or another," said John.

"There’s always a community centre or a hut somewhere, or a youth club.

“There’s no reason why it can’t go Wiltshire-wide, UK-wide.”

Further information about John's projects and how others can help is available at www.facebook.com/johntomjoecharity.cycles.7

John is also heavily involved with a helpful enthusiasts' forum - therustychainring.co.uk