Nick Ross - Career

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 several 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 is often cited as one of the most influential TV shows of the period. According to at least one author, by reframing the whole concept of road safety Ross's campaigning transformed public attitudes and public policy to such an extent that, "in significant consequence British mortality rates of people under 50 are among the lowest in the world." Ross also produced and directed 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 his regular sign-off, "Don't have nightmares, do sleep well", became a well-known catch-phrase. Around the same time his celebrity status was enhanced 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.

He has frequently appeared on other shows, including Have I Got News for You, and on 1 April 1985 Ross made a guest appearance on the final episode of Are You Being Served?.

In 1989 he was asked to present BBC Radio 4's Tuesday morning phone-in, the name of which was changed from Tuesday Call to Call Nick Ross. He is regarded as having 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.

He was attracted by 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 chat shows, travel programmes and debates, but he was most at home in live studios, often orchestrating large-scale debates. In 2000 he presented a general knowledge quiz called The Syndicate, aired on BBC 1 which pitted two teams across three rounds on general knowledge. but the show's format could not compete with The Weakest Link.

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 (see Away from broadcasting, below).

In late 2007, Ross left Crimewatch, soon followed by his co-presenter Fiona Bruce. The replacement presenter, Kirsty Young, was about 20 years younger than Nick and the BBC were accused of ageism over these changes. 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 spent a year creating a major BBC One series The Truth About Crime which aired in mid-2009 and explained the fall in crime rates and how offending can be reduced further. The show was described by The Times as an "outstanding... sane, insightful and compellingly argued documentary series."

He has since been making other TV shows, such as Secrets of the Crime Museum and science programmes for BBC Radio 4 including an acclaimed re-examination of the Chernobyl disaster "Fallout: the Legacy of Chernobyl". His written journalism has included a re-examination of the Air France Flight 447 air crash that provoked controversy on both sides of the Atlantic.