Reggae Reggae Sauce entrepreneur Levi Roots wants to inspire a generation of Birmingham youngsters to follow in his footsteps and go into business.

The businessman, whose appearance on TV show Dragons' Den catapulted his sauce into the aisles of major supermarkets, will be in Birmingham this month as part of the Jamaica Live! event in the run-up to the Olympics.

Next year Birmingham will be the base for Jamaica’s Olympic team, including the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt.

Mr Roots said he was looking forward to coming to Birmingham, a city he visited often when he started out on his career as a musician.

“Birmingham takes me back to the days when I used to be in sound systems in the eighties and nineties when we used to come to Birmingham a lot,” he said.

“It’s a special place for me and I want to inspire young people outside of music, which I used to do then.

“Now I like to inspire them into business as we really need that entrepreneurial spirit to start shining among young people.

“And also I’m looking to come to cook some beautiful food,” he added.

Mr Roots famously sang about the virtues of his Reggae Reggae Sauce on the Dragons Den show in 2007, inspiring dragons Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh to invest in the project.

Prior to the show, the business had been going for many years with Mr Roots and his family making the sauce to sell at the Notting Hill Carnival.

Mr Roots credits Dragons Den with propelling his company into the fast lane – but he believes he still would have made it without the TV show.

“For the sauce and for myself, with the grace of God, we would have got there eventually.

“It would have got there off its own back,” he said.

“I think passion is the main thing that keeps you going – passion is what’s going to help you through the early days when things are going bad.