Headphones to hard hat for DJ

After a 4.15am wake-up call for the breakfast show on Wolverhampton’s The Wolf FM, Laura Cannon could be forgiven for heading straight back to bed.

But as soon as she is done on air, it’s off with the headphones and on with the hard hat and the tool belt as the station’s glamorous actress-turned-presenter heads to her very own building site. As well as her radio career, the 30-year-old is trying to forge a sideline in renovating houses and prefers to do most of the hard graft herself.

She said: “I live in Ironbridge so I have to set my alarm for about 4.15am to get to the station in time for the show at 6am.

“As soon as I have finished I get back in the car and head back to Telford where I am renovating my first house.

“I often come into work at the station having been knocking down walls and mixing concrete the night before, so it is a good job the listeners can’t see me.”

Laura is the new co-host and travel presenter of the breakfast show on The Wolf 107.7FM alongside Dicky Dodd.

It is the former Telford schoolgirl’s first radio gig. Her previous jobs have included TV presenting and acting work in London where she lived before moving back to Ironbridge.

She said: “I have done all sorts of cheesy jobs as well as getting to play some really good roles.”

One was acting out short dramatisations from Agony Aunt letters on UKTV Living.

“I have also been on tour with plays like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, in which I played a prostitute.”

While playing a small part on the 1990s film Feast of July, Laura worked with British actors Greg Wise and Ben Chaplin and even lunched with Hollywood megastar Harvey Keitel, who was dating one of the cast members at the time.

“I was only 17 at the time so it was just unreal,” she said.

On joining The Wolf, she said: “It is a refreshing change. I am used to spending hours in make-up and having to go on camera and being conscious of how you look.

“But on the radio I can turn up having got up in the early hours not having had time to put any make-up on. You get to open up a lot of more on radio and show more of your personality.”