“I’ve never been ambitious and have always just let life happen to me and it hasn’t been too bad.

“If this is the end, then that’s fantastic because it’s all been a blessing for such a long time.

“I’m in the Hall of Fame and you can’t knock that, it sums up everything going back to when I won my first award in the mid 80s as the Variety Club’s Independent Radio Personality of the Year.

“I just got up on the stage and said ‘You don’t know me, but I’m world-famous in Birmingham’.”

Although he began his career at WM’s forerunner, BBC Birmingham, Les is best known for his unrivalled 26-year stint on the breakfast show at BRMB and former sister station XTRA-am.

His last show will be on March 27.

His last show in September 2002 saw him leaving Birmingham International station on a locomotive bearing his name.

After buying the loco for its scrap value of around £12,000, Les has since spent years and thousands of pounds restoring it at Tyseley Railway Museum.

Les came out of radio retirement to join Saga in Edgbaston for two years, but left at the end of 2004 after claiming he was being turned into a ‘Robo-jock’ who could not even drink coffee in the studio.

After beginning at WM on weekends in early 2005, the lure of an afternoon show proved irresistible two years ago.

Les turned 60 on February 7 and celebrated with a mammoth Orient Express train journey from Singapore to Bangkok.