Business News


He’s been confronted by awkward stars of television and coped with brutal working hours but Ed James is full of vigour as he prepares to again host Birmingham’s premier business dinner for the Chamber. He will be joined on stage by Tru Powell, the mercurial boss of Aston Performing Arts Academy, who will provide the entertainment in front of 1,400 guests at the ICC. Chamberlink’s award-winning columnist Jon Griffin talked to them both ahead of the big day on 19 March.


e’s the best-known breakfast DJ in the region with a remarkable 20-year history of


The Griffin Report H


4.30am wake-up calls. For two decades Ed James has


jumped out of bed pre-dawn to drive to the studio for his 6am show to entertain his legions of followers across the West Midlands. It’s not a job for the faint-hearted, but Ed is not so much a glass half- full man as a full glass 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The 43-year-old father of three is


as irrepressibly upbeat in the flesh as he is on the airwaves. He is a walking antidote to the so-called snowflake generation, the Millennials accused of crumbling at the first sign of adversity in today’s increasingly complex society. “It is a privilege to do this job –


you are in a room, you are playing some great records, you are having a chat. If you are heading to work to a job you do not like, the last thing you want to hear on the radio is someone in a bad mood,” says Ed.


‘We all make mistakes, you can have a laugh about it, you do not take yourself too seriously’


“No-one wants to hear you moaning, it is your job to make people smile and tell people that life is alright. At the end of the day, we are just real, normal people. “We all make mistakes, you can


have a laugh about it, you do not take yourself too seriously, you do not pretend to be something you are not.” It’s a good recipe for life itself,


and Ed readily admits that it hasn’t always been plain sailing behind the turntable at Heart, where he was breakfast host in Birmingham for 18 years before moving to a new drivetime slot with co- presenter Gemma Hill. “Some interviews didn’t go so


well. Will Young had won Pop Idol and was the biggest star at the time. But he was in a bad mood, he didn’t want to be there, he wanted to eat fruit all the way through the interview.


16 CHAMBERLINK March 2020


In the pink: Ed James (left) and Tru Powell test the airwaves


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