Why Ross is all talked out

IN the late 1980s, a tall, well-dressed chap used to come into the West End comic shop where I worked, and buy armfuls of expensive vintage comics.

Even in a shopful of obsessives, this guy really liked his comics. He still does, so much so that lately he has been writing one of his own, about vampires in Prohibition-era New York.

But then, Jonathan Ross has time on his hands. Having worked in the media since childhood — he appeared in Persil and Rice Krispies adverts when still at primary school — ‘Wossy’ will turn 50 on Wednesday. For the first time in decades, television’s principal court jester is out of a job, describing himself on Twitter as “temporarily a gentleman of leisure”.

Fifty is a significant number for Ross. This was the percentage by which he suggested the BBC reduce his pay to bring it down to less enraging levels — his salary was rumoured to be £6m a year — but his offer didn’t work and the UK’s most highly paid television presenter left the corporation last January, after much kerfuffle and controversy. Ross’s greatest asset — his gob — had become his greatest hindrance. While it’s unlikely that his television career is over, he has been off the air ever since.

So, apart from creating comic books, what will ‘Wossy’ do next? Go digital, like Ricky Gervais, who smoothly moved from The Office to fronting podcasts, and making a cool £18m in the process? Ross has half a million followers on Twitter. Then, there’s the online Wossy Book Club, which, while not in the Oprah league, has boosted sales of oddball books.

This is a redeeming aspect of Jonathan Ross; his cultural voracity. While his television persona may be irritating — sycophantic jestering, tomfoolery and rampant egomania — the man knows his stuff. Books, films, comics, music — Ross’s enduring strength (apart from his motor mouth and inability to say ‘R’) is his lifelong devotion to alternative culture. B-movies, indie bands, cult books, trashy obscurity, forgotten gems; it’s what fuels him, and makes him more interesting than the usual media blandoids. Plus, he’s so rich that he need never work again.

Ross was born in 1960 and grew up in Leytonstone, a dull and unlovely part of east London. One of six children, his father was a truck driver; his mother, Martha, got her children working in adverts. She was an extra in EastEnders from its inception, until 2006, when she was fired for leaking its Christmas plotline to her son, Paul, a broadcaster Paul Ross (all six Ross siblings work in the media).

Family-oriented, Wossy has been with his partner, the writer, Jane Goldman, since she was 16 and he was 26. They married in 1988, have three children — Betty, Harvey and Honey — and live in Hampstead. Apart from a brief separation in 1999, the couple remain solid; they share common tastes. Goldman wrote the screenplay for the hit comic-based movie, Kick Ass.

As a teenager, Jonathan was a shy, short-sighted comic geek. After studying modern history at the University of London, he spent four years as a Channel 4 researcher. Inspired by American broadcaster David Letterman’s chat show, The Last Resort, he suggested a British version; his idea was approved and Ross was given the chance to present it. He was a hit.

Wossy soon had audiences of four million, becoming one of the most successful television presenters of the 1980s. After covering for Terry Wogan for a month, he was given his own Channel 4 chat show, Tonight With Jonathan Ross, in the early 1990s. Despite the surface confidence and brash, shouty manner, the success was getting too much for Wossy. He recalls this period as one of stress, excessive drinking and depression. Before going in front of the cameras, “every day I was paralysed, sick with nerves,” he said.

Ross stopped drinking 11 years ago. Having lost his way in television, he reappeared on radio, first on Virgin, and then, from 1999, presenting a hugely successful Saturday daytime show on BBC Radio 2 (where his impeccable taste in music counteracted the lad banter). He also took over Barry Norman’s film review programme. From 2001, he became the best-known presenter in the UK with Friday Night With Jonathan Ross. But even while working with the premier league of entertainers and public figures, his gobbiness remained unchecked.

It was this inability to keep his mouth shut that lost him his BBC job. A litany of comments had caused offence; he infuriated the National Union of Journalists when he said of his massive pay that he was worth “1,000 BBC journalists”. Fellow BBC Radio 2 presenter, Paul Gambaccini, described him as “an icon of greed” while less successful media rival, Piers Morgan, called him “a talentless little f**kwit”.

On his late-night BBC1 Friday show, Ross made guests squirm for the entertainment of his audience. He asked future prime minister, David Cameron, if he had ever thought about Margaret Thatcher when masturbating, and propositioned actress Gwyneth Paltrow on air. But someone else’s radio show was his downfall. Broadcast in October 2008, Jonathan Ross and his pal, Russell Brand, on Brand’s night-time BBC2 radio show, left a dodgy message on the answering machine of elderly national treasure, Andrew Sachs, Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Although the message was about Brand having sex with Sachs’ granddaughter, and received little immediate attention, the Mail newspapers whipped the story into a national debate about inappropriateness and overpaid men who ought to know better. Chaos ensued.

Brand quit as his star continued to rise, but Ross hung on, only to be humiliated with a three-month suspension, treated by the Beeb like a misbehaving schoolboy. On return, his radio show was pre-recorded so that no more “lapses in taste and decency” could be broadcast. But Ross is not about taste and decency; he never pretended to be a Michael Parkinson.

Coupled with his gigantic salary, it was all too much — which is why he describes himself as a gentleman of leisure. Still, if his endlessly jolly Tweets are anything to go by, he seems not to be suffewing too gweatly.

Wossy and his incredibly big gob

Salary When it was revealed that Ross was earning around £10,000 per TV show, he made a flippant comment at the 2007 Comedy Awards that he was worth “1,000 BBC journalists”. This came just after a BBC announcement of 2,000 job cuts. Clang.

Heather Mills: In 2006 Ross suggested that Heather Mills, soon after an announcement that she and Paul McCartney were divorcing, was a “f**king liar” and that he “wouldn’t be surprised if we found out she’s actually got two legs.”

Gwyneth Paltrow: In 2008, Ross was found in breach of BBC guidelines after he told his studio guest Paltrow that he would “like to f**k her”. He made this comment on his show in front of a live audience.

David Cameron: In 2006, Ross asked the Tory leader, “Did you or did you not have a wank thinking of the Margaret Thatcher?” Cameron demurred. Everyone else vomited.

“Hannah Montana”: In 2009 on his radio show, Ross made a comment that was interpreted as homophobic: “If your son asks for a Hannah Montana MP3 player, then you might want to already think about putting him down for adoption in later life, when they settle down with their partner.”

Russell Brand / Andrew Sachs: The straw that broke the BBC’s back.