Les Ross - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

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 no 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.

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