Sussex
lurve story
Having graced our airwaves since the ‘80s, Ambrose Harcourt has the
silky smooth late night voice that may well have been the cause of a minor
population boom.
I grew up in Nigeria on the west coast of
Africa and I was part of a big family. Out
of all my siblings, I was lucky enough
to be chosen to go to boarding school
in Europe – my parents decided they
wanted to pay to send one of us so we
could get our education in Europe.
because I learned a lot and I got to meet
people from different parts of the world.
My guardians, they were so supportive
and they wouldn’t have any nonsense
about me or anything so, from my point
of view, it was a very positive experience
and they helped me in every possible way.
It was a choice of going to Germany or
coming to the UK. It was my choice but
because I found the language easier and
I could speak it already, I decided on the
UK. My parents sent me here to study
when I was quite young - I was only
about 15.
I’ve always been laid back in my life,
even when I was a young man growing
up. Even now I’m still laid back. And I’m
pretty positive - I try not to worry about
too much. We all have challenges in life everyone’s got challenges in life but you
have to look at them in a positive way
because there are always people worse
off than you are.
It was a very young age to leave Nigeria
but luckily I got introduced to an English
family who became my UK parents and
they looked after me. I first of all came to
London then eventually went to live with
them in East Anglia. I feel I was really
brought up in this country in Norwich
and King’s Lynn. It’s where I went to
school - they looked after me while I was
there and they were just fantastic for me.
Sadly, they’ve both gone now, they’re not
with us anymore but everything was just
brilliant with them.
In East Anglia, in those days, like a lot of
places in the UK in the 60s (it was a long
time ago), there weren’t that many black
people so it was quite an experience,
you know?
For me, it was a very positive experience
8
I studied chemistry at university, which
I have never ever used but it was there
that my career in radio started off. They
started the station and I was the social
secretary, I was in charge of hiring bands
and all that kind of stuff.
We started a committee and I was the
top man. The rest of the committee were
all engineers which I hadn’t realised at
the time and while they were very good
at getting it all up and running - it was all
sorted in three months – none of them
wanted to go on air so that was down to
me.
I didn’t really want to do it but they said
nobody else is going to do it so that was
that. I thought I was pretty rubbish but