Les Ross

Les Ross, MBE (born Leslie Meakin on 7 February 1949 in Birmingham) is a British disc jockey and long established personality in the West Midlands.

Ross always wanted to become a DJ so at the age of 11, he wrote to the general manager of Radio Luxembourg.

He attended King Edward VI Aston School in Aston, Birmingham and left there with 10 O Levels. His first job after school was at IBM, but he did not like the job and left after a year. His next job was at Witton Cemetery which he described in a 2009 interview as being "Dickensian by comparison" as "People used fountain pens to put things in the register", but which he thoroughly enjoyed.

At the age of 17, Les won a DJ competition, which was run by local paper, the Birmingham Evening Mail, beating Johnnie Walker, who came second. Part of his prize was to appear at Radio Luxembourg for an audition, but this never happened. He was offered his first gig at the Mecca Ballroom in Birmingham, where he worked twice a week. Then moving onto the Birmingham Rollerskating Rink where he played five nights a week.

The break he was waiting for came in 1970, when he joined BBC Radio Birmingham now BBC WM, presenting a Saturday morning show with John Henry. “Ross and Henry” was a ground-breaking formula in radio; much admired in the industry. It was one of the first “zoo-radio” formats – involving a studio audience and interactive elements and phone-in requests presented by breathy blonde Fiona MacDonald. The most popular and listened to show on the station, Les was soon established as the most popular presenter on the station having taken over the breakfast show from Peter Powell who moved on to Radio 1 and then Radio Luxembourg. The breakfast show, entitled “On The Move”, was unusual because it started at 5 am. The BBC national networks did not start programming until 6 am making Les the only presenter on the air in the UK for one hour a day. The Radio Birmingham transmitter at 5.5kW was one of the more powerful local radio ones in the country at the time and so Les enjoyed an audience of shift workers over a wide area.

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