Richard Anthony Crispian Francis Prew Hope-Weston (11 July 1940 – 6 March 2005), known professionally as Tommy Vance, was an English radio broadcaster. He was an important factor in the rise of the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM), along with London-based disc jockey Neal Kay, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Vance was one of the first radio hosts in the United Kingdom to broadcast hard rock and heavy metal in the early 1980s, providing the only national radio forum for both bands and fans. The Friday Rock Show that he hosted gave new bands airtime for their music and fans an opportunity to hear it. He used a personal tag-line of "TV on the radio". His voice was heard by millions around the world announcing the Wembley Stadium acts at Live Aid in 1985. Early life Born Richard Anthony Crispian Francis Prew Hope-Weston in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, on 11 July 1940, his grandmother owned a travelling repertory company, his father was an electronics engineer, and his mother a former singer and dancer. Expelled from school at 15 for truancy, Vance got his first job as trainee manager at the Hyde Park Hotel, London. He joined the merchant navy in 1956, aged 16, as a cabin boy. It was while docked in New York, listening to US radio, that Vance first toyed with becoming a disc jockey. He had been brought up on the British broadcasting of the 1950s and, like a number of his contemporaries, fell in love with the brash sound of American commercial radio. When Vance returned to the UK, he worked as a mechanic for a jukebox company so that he could hear music for free. Unable to find an opening in British radio he enrolled at a Northern Irish college, becoming a part-time actor/stage hand. He joined the Ulster Bridge Repertory Company, run by the actor James Ellis, as a stage manager. Career KOL Seattle and KHJ Los Angeles Moving to Vancouver in pursuit of his first wife, Fern, in 1964, he joined KOL Seattle as its prime drive-time jock. The programme had originally been intended for another presenter who had pulled out of the deal at the last moment, the jingles and pre-launch publicity could not go to waste continuing under the name "Tommy Vance", "The station asked if I would take the name as they had already made the jingles for