Born Thomas Whitehead in Oldham on 9 May 1944, Tony Prince had been an apprentice toolmaker and a singer and guitarist with a Manchester group called The Jasons before he became a TV personality, presenting the ITV pop music show Discs-a-GoGo, and eventually joining Radio Caroline North in December 1965.
Known to listeners as Tony ‘Your Royal Ruler’ Prince, he went on to Radio Luxembourg (known as “208”) when the UK government banned pirate radio in 1967, eventually becoming programme director there.
Because Radio Luxembourg’s powerful nighttime AM transmitter could bypass communist borders, Prince amassed a massive, clandestine fan base of millions of young people across Eastern Europe. In 1970, he received an unexpected invitation from a state entertainment agency in Prague to perform there.
The communist authorities offered him exceptionally high performance fees, but the currency was completely worthless outside the country. Prince and his pregnant wife, Christine, had to spend every penny of it inside Czechoslovakia, essentially treating the trip like a lavish, bizarre holiday in a police state.
In the early 1980s, he successfully pivoted the station’s evening format to focus heavily on emerging club, disco, and soul music. He launched dance magazine Mixmag in 1982, which was later sold to EMAP for £9 million.
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