A RADIO enthusiast who cut his teeth on his own neighbourhood station is poised to help Britain's top DJ crack the US music market.

Simon Cole, a former Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School pupil who was born and brought up in Beardwood, Blackburn, has signed a three-year deal with Fatboy Slim to produce a programme for the US music market.

It is a far cry from Simon's humble beginnings of setting up a radio station for his own pleasure as a teenager.

He set up 'Avenue Broadcasting Corporation' in his home in Wyfordby Avenue, after a BT engineer left some spare cable at his home.

Simon now owns a stock market quoted radio company, UBC Media, and has signed the deal with the star whose real name is Norman Cook. The show, Fatboy Slim's Brighton Beach Mix, will be aired on US music stations in New York, Orlando and Miami.

Simon is chief executive of UBC, which he founded with a colleague in 1989.

He had previously worked at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, where he was head of programmes and was boss of DJ Chris Evans.

His love of radio began when he was a schoolboy in Blackburn.

His ingenuity brought him to the attention of a radio station in Blackburn and he earned valuable experience there before moving to Manchester.

Now his company UBC is the largest independent producer of radio programmes for the BBC, and also supplies entertainment and financial news to commercial radio stations.

Simon, 45, said: "My first experience of radio was when a BT engineer left a spare piece of cable at my home.

"I rigged it up and created my first-ever radio station called Avenue Broadcasting Corporation.

"From there I cut my teeth at BBC Radio Lancashire with the help of Gerald Jackson.

"I probably use something every day that I learnt in Blackburn."

Simon then went on to study drama at Manchester University, but he couldn't give up radio and joined a station in Manchester from where his career took off.

Simon said: "It gives me a thrill to know that 2million people are listening to something that I have helped produce.

"It is the buzz of communicating which has never left me."

And Simon is confident that Fatboy Slim can have success in the US with the help of UBC.

The company has already set up a similar deal for another British DJ, Paul Oakenfold, whose Saturday night show broadcasts to 1.7m people and plays on 15 stations from New York to San Francisco.

Fatboy Slim, who has sold seven million albums worldwide and married DJ Zoe Ball at the height of his success, said: "It's great to be exporting Brighton Beach around the world.

"The States is an enormous market and this is a wonderful opportunity to get millions of Americans up on their feet."