Personal
Ross was born in Camden, London, England on 17 November 1960, the son of a lorry driver father and an film extra mother, Martha Ross, who put all of her children forward for roles in television advertisements. He grew up in Leytonstone and is the brother of journalist, television editor, and media personality Paul Ross; TV producer/actor Miles Ross; TV producer Simon Ross, and music industry professional T-BO. He was educated at Norlington School for Boys, a comprehensive school at the same time as his elder brother Paul, and at Leyton County High School for Boys, a ]. He also attended Southampton College of Art, now known as Southampton Solent University. He then studied Modern European History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University of London.
Ross married author/journalist/broadcaster Jane Goldman, ten years his junior, in 1988, when Goldman was 18. They have since had three children: Betty Kitten (named after Bettie Page), Harvey Kirby (named after Harvey Keitel and Jack Kirby, a comic book creator whom Ross especially admires), and Honey Kinney. The family lives in Hampstead Garden Suburb.
Ross and others have used his rhotacism for comic effect and he is sometimes known as "Wossy," including on his Twitter feed (@wossy). His right index finger is crooked, he revealed on Top Gear that as a child he accidentally sliced off the tip of the finger and had to have it reattached.
Ross is known for owning exotic pets. He is a big music fan and the first band he saw live was punk rockers X-Ray Spex at Islington's Hope and Anchor pub in North London. He is a big fan of David Bowie, Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry, Queen (he was in the audience for Queen at Wembley), British punk rock, Spandau Ballet, Sparks, Star Trek, Doctor Who (his favourite Doctor was Jon Pertwee), and comic books. Ross has even co-owned a comic shop in London with Paul Gambaccini and released Turf, his first comic book, in 2010, with American artist Tommy Lee Edwards. He was also the visual inspiration for the main character in the comic book Saviour. Ross is also greatly interested in Japan, presenting a BBC-TV series on many different aspects of Japanese culture, Japanorama, for three series between 2002–07. He was a regular at London's Blitz club during the early 1980s (famous for the Blitz Kids). He is a fan of the singers Morrissey and George Michael.
He is a friend of comedian Ricky Gervais and bought him a kitten after Gervais's previous cat, Colin, had died. The cat's name is Ollie and was presented to him on an episode of Ross's talk show Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. Ross also presented Penn & Teller: Fool Us He was one of the special celebrity guests in the final episode of Gervais's second season of Extras, in which Gervais's character, Andy Millman, and Ross were shown to be the best of friends after a fictional appearance on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.
He is also a close friend of author Neil Gaiman, and he and his wife appear in Gaiman's short story "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch", collected in Fragile Things.
In 2005, Ross was made an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting. He celebrated the news by playing "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols on his Radio 2 show.
When interviewing Colin Farrell on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on 19 February 2010, Ross claimed not to have consumed alcohol for ten years.
Ross has attended a fund raiser for the James Randi Educational Foundation called The Amazing Meeting in London in 2009 and 2010. Interviewed by Rebecca Watson, Ross described himself as a big fan of James Randi and the other speakers – who were mainly prominent sceptics – and said that he and his wife had come to have a sceptical view of the world. Ross has been supportive of Simon Singh's efforts to defend an accusation of libel by the British Chiropractic Association and Ross has posed for the Geek Calendar 2011, a fund raiser for the libel reform in the UK.
At a book signing event in Central London in September 2010, Ross stated that as a youngster he went to school in Leyton (Leyton Senior High School) and supports Leyton Orient F.C.
On 6 June 2011, it was announced that Ross's beloved pug Mr Pickle had been killed in an accident on board a train while Ross was filming a new travelogue show for ITV. Mr Pickle was well known to both viewers and listeners of Ross' TV and radio shows.
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