Charlie Ross has been a familiar face on our TV screens for many years. He is best known for working across a variety of BBC antique programmes, including Bargain Hunt, Flog It!, Antiques Road Trip and Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. He started his career in 1963 and it doesn’t look like he’s planning to hang up his gavel anytime soon.
The 75-year-old antiques expert began by auctioning chickens and turkeys before he moved into the realm of antique furniture. He later developed his own auction house in Woburn near Milton Keynes.
Ross has also spent many years abroad as he has conducted the Pebble Beach Vintage Car Auction in California and the Scottsdale Auction in Arizona.
At one point, he held the record for the highest price ever achieved for a car sold at auction in the US. The vehicle, a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa Prototype, fetched over $16 million in 2011.
However, this record was surpassed in 2013 and again in 2014 when a Ferrari 250 GTO was sold in Carmel, California for a staggering sum exceeding $38 million.
He has also dipped his toe into the music industry as he recorded a rock version of Sleigh Ride in aid of BBC Children In Need alongside fellow Antique Experts Charles Hanson, Philip Serrell and James Braxton.
In 2018 he re-joined Philip Serrell, James Braxton and a group of celebrities under the new name The Celebs to record a second Christmas single called Rock With Rudolph, to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Away from the screen, Charlie has remained relatively private about his family life. But the TV star has been married to his wife Sally for more than 40 years and they live near near Bicester outside Oxford. Charlie and Sally have two children, Charlotte and Olly. The couple are now proud grandparents to Finn, Max, Ana and Zac.
Despite being a returning member of the Bargain Hunt team, Ross has vowed not to appear on Antiques Roadshow in the future. With his expertise and likeable personality, it came as no surprise that he was asked to join the BBC show a few years ago. But things didn’t go exactly to plan.
Charlie began to realise that his decision to join the show was a “mistake” and rebuffed the offer soon after filming began. He recalled: “The BBC and I made a mistake. Theirs was to ask me if I would like to join the Antiques Roadshow team, mine was to say yes.
“Both were understandable. On Flog It!, after learning on the hoof from countless auctions over many years, I showed some knowledge of the value of things.
“I also came across as a genial sort of chap whom audiences appeared to like. For my part, the chance to appear on one of the BBC’s flagship evening programmes was too exciting to turn down.”
He went to meet the team for dinner the evening before filming, but “the vibes were not good from the start.” Charlie continued in his autobiography, Sold!: “Several of them, notably Hugo Morley-Fletcher, Tim Wonnacott and Henry Sandham, were friendly and welcoming. I found the others harder work.”
He said things went from bad to worse when it was valuation day and a woman brought in a Spanish Armada strongbox. He recalled saying: “Madam, how lovely to meet you. May I say what a magnificent chest you have.”
The cheeky comment prompted a laugh from the woman and the camera crew. However, the director was less amused and gave Charlie a telling off, warning him that Antiques Roadshow is a “serious programme.”
The scene was then reshot without his joke. Charlie adds: “After a few undistinguished appearances, I suggested that perhaps Antiques Roadshow wasn’t really for me. They agreed, and I moved on to less serious programmes better suited to my wish to entertain as well as inform.”