'I found my Live Aid flag in my dad's shed'

The flag was recovered from a shed decades after the event

David Hancock said his "heart stopped" when he discovered a cherished memento he made for Live Aid in his father's shed.

Mr Hancock, from Ollerton in Nottinghamshire, was just 18 when he attended the concert on 13 July 1985.

He had made a U2 flag for the fundraising event, but it got lost after he gave it to his father, Maurice, for safekeeping.

The homemade banner was found after he went into the shed to find a water bowl for a dog at a family barbecue.

David Hancock still has his ticket from the landmark event

Mr Hancock recalled it was a mad dash down to Wembley to make the gig in time.

"The event I think had been put together pretty hastily," he said.

"I got interested when it was announced U2 were playing.

"I'd seen [them] about two weeks before at another gig in Milton Keynes, so I was really quite excited about it.

"All of my mates who were not going to Live Aid with me were like 'oh, why are you doing that? You've already seen them, they will only be on for two or three songs'.

"But it turned out that it was actually music history."

Having travelled down to London with two friends, Mr Hancock said they went without "any real expectations of what it would be", but he still had time to make a new flag.

"I worked in a double glazing factory, so we had lots of cleaning cloth for the glass, and I found the largest piece," he said.

"I took it home, and with a big felt pen I put that U2 design on it, which was from an album cover."

U2 performed a celebrated set at Wembley for Live Aid

After enjoying being one of the thousands in the stadium, Mr Hancock returned home with his friends and the flag, which was taken in by his father.

"Dad was really excited because he had seen the flag waving," he said.

"My recollection is that he said he was going to put it in the garage in the loft space, then it disappeared, and I didn't really give it a lot more thought for a long time.

"He died a long time after that, in 1999, and then at some point after I thought I'd go and find that flag, and it wasn't there - I looked and looked and looked, moved everything around, it just wasn't there."

After assuming the artefact was lost to history, Mr Hancock stumbled across it in 2016 when searching for a dog bowl in the shed at the family home, where his mother still lived.

"For some reason I was drawn to something that was in the loft space of the shed, and I could see the end of this pole - I knew exactly what it was," he said.

"My heart stopped for a second - I couldn't believe it.

"It felt very strange, because the first thing that occurred to me was the last person to have touched it would have been dad, and I just felt like I was touching him, touching his hand.

"It was quite a moving thing."

After sharing his story on social media for the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, Mr Hancock said the response had been "completely overwhelming".

"I was 18 at the time of Live Aid, as were many other people of that generation.

"Hearing my story 40 years on, a lot of those people will have lost parents, and that's the connection," he said.

"I'm delighted it's warmed somebody's heart."

Mr Hancock said he had been completely overwhelmed by the response on social media to his Live Aid story