Nick Ross

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For the ice hockey player, see Nick Ross (ice hockey).
For the New York improviser, see Nick Ross (improv).
Nick Ross in the BBC Crimewatch studio.
Nick Ross in the BBC Crimewatch studio.

Nick Ross (born in London on 7 August 1947) is a British radio and television presenter across a wide range of factual programmes but is best known for his long-running co-hosting of the BBC TV show Crimewatch UK[1] which he left on 2 July 2007 after 23 years.[2]

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[edit] Early life

Raised in Surrey, south of London, Ross went to Wallington County Grammar School, and then read psychology at Queen's University Belfast. The Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney was one of his lecturers. He graduated with a BA (Hons), later became a Doctor of the University (honoris causa) and he was deputy president of the Student Union and a leader of the student civil rights movement in 1968 and 1969. He started in journalism by reporting on the violence in Belfast for BBC Northern Ireland.

[edit] Career

Nick Ross began broadcasting in Northern Ireland while still a student and reported on the violence as the Troubles started. He returned to London and presented British radio programmes such as the BBC's World at One, PM and The World Tonight, and moved to TV in 1979 as a reporter for Man Alive on BBC2. He made three classic documentaries in a brief stint as a producer: The Biggest Epidemic of Our Times was a powerful polemic on road accidents which was made for Man Alive but transferred to BBC1 and was repeated for many years, and two programmes on drug addiction, The Fix and The Cure, most famous for following an addict called Gina. He presented a law series Out of Court, from which Crimewatch developed (based on a German prototype) in 1984.

Crimewatch made him a household name in the UK and around the same time his celebrity status was enlarged when he presented Britain's first daily breakfast TV programme, Breakfast Time on BBC1, with Frank Bough and Selina Scott, as well as launching Watchdog as a prime time stand-alone consumer series. He was poached to start a new early evening news programme Sixty Minutes, which proved an unwieldy format but was the BBC's first attempt to unite its news division with current affairs programmers.

In 1989 he was asked to start a phone-in for BBC Radio 4, Call Nick Ross, and he transformed the genre by attracting politicians and others at the centre of news events as well as ordinary listeners so that the programme put callers directly in touch with the people who mattered. He resigned in 1997 for reasons that have never been made clear, but not before picking up an award as best radio presenter of the year. During the 1991 Gulf War he was a volunteer presenter on the BBC Radio 4 News FM service.[3]

He was poached to Channel 4 for a time to present A Week in Politics, and then moved to cover the BBC's live broadcasts of parliament in Westminster with Nick Ross. (At one stage in the 1990s he was often doing three mainstream live programmes a day such as Call Nick Ross, Westminster with Nick Ross and Crimewatch.) As one of the star BBC presenters he was used widely in a variety of formats including quizzes, chat shows, travel programmes and debates, but he was most at home in live studios, often orchestrating large-scale debates.

His co-presenter, Jill Dando, was murdered in 1999 and Nick Ross started a campaign to commemorate her, culminating in the establishment of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London. He is a Visiting Professor and Honorary Fellow of UCL, and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminologists.

In late 2007, he left Crimewatch, soon followed by his co-presenter Fiona Bruce. The replacement presenter, Kirsty Young, is about 20 years younger than Nick and the BBC have been accused of ageism over these changes.[4] His 23 years as the main Crimewatch anchor marks him as one of the longest-serving presenters of a continuous series in TV history.

He has since been making other TV shows including a series for the independent TV company Endemol.

[edit] Away from broadcasting

Ross has had a role on several government committees (including the Committee on the Ethics of Gene Therapy, the Gene Therapy Advisory Committee, the NHS National Plan Task Force, the National Crime Prevention Board and the Crime Prevention Agency Board) and the UK's main bioethics think-tank (the Nuffield Council on Bioethics). He has a wide range of outside interests including ethics (notably medical ethics), promoting science and evidence-led health-care, crime prevention, road safety and fire safety.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Society of Medicine, he has been a member of the Committee on Public Understanding of Science, chairman of the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books (twice), chairman of the National Road Safety Committee of ROSPA and is an affiliate of the James Lind Alliance. He is a member of the Ethics Standards Advisory Panel for onCore (the UK tissue bank), is Vice Chairman of the Wales Cancer Bank Advisory Board, an adviser to Victim Support, and president of several charities including HealthWatch and Tacade. He is a Trustee of Crimestoppers, of Sense About Science and of the UK Stem Cell Foundation, an Ambassador for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and Guest Director of the Cheltenham Science Festival.

He is President of the London Accident Prevention Council, a patron of Prisoners Abroad (a registered charity which supports Britons detained overseas), and a range of other charities including Animal Care Trust, British Wireless for the Blind Fund, Heartbeat, Jewish Association for the Mentally Ill, Kidney Research Aid Fund, Myasthenia Gravis Association, National Depression Campaign, Missing, NICHS, Raynauld's & Scleroderma Association, Resources for Autism, SaneLine, Simon Community Northern Ireland, and Young at Heart.

In 2003 he was tipped by The Sun newspaper as a candidate for Mayor of London, and his name was mentioned again for the 2008 election[5], and though he declined to put his name forward for nomination[6] he wrote a manifesto for London's evening paper[7] and chaired one of the key public debates.

He is considered to be in the top rank of chairmen and moderators for corporate and government meetings. His wife, Sarah Caplin founded ChildLine and is a senior executive with ITV, the British commercial broadcaster. They have three sons: Adam, Sam and Jack.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ross to depart from Crimewatch - Greater London Online
  2. ^ Nick Ross says goodbye - Times Online - 3 July 2007
  3. ^ Sound Matters - Five Live - the War of Broadcasting House - a morality story
  4. ^ Ross quits BBC's Crimewatch in row over ageism - This is London: Showbiz News
  5. ^ Nick Ross urged to stand for Mayor - Evening Standard
  6. ^ My mayoral manifesto - the A-Z of what needs doing - Evening Standard
  7. ^ My mayoral manifesto - the A-Z of what needs doing

[edit] External links