Eddie Chimney

The proud gentleman on the left is Scott McGuire of Prospect, Illinois, who in December 1983 appeared in Kerrang! No. 58 after having redesigned his chimney stack to look like Iron Maiden's Eddie.

I know we're meant to shake our heads at the reckless eccentricity here (the article begins "Only in America!") but the truth is, I'm all for this sort of thing. In fact, the only downside I could see to this would be a desire to fill up your fireplace with old car tyres and other such muck so that you could get a good head of smoke coming out of the top.

(When I was growing up, if someone did manage to "put their lum up", usually by overloading their fire with coal, empty Domestos bottles and wet sticks, then half the neighbours would go out in the street to stand in the smog and watch. You took what entertainment you could get before the internet came along).

Fly, on your way, like an Eagle

You may have already seen this doing the rounds of the internet but I'm sure you won't mind seeing it again. Three thoughts struck me while watching it:

First, Flight of Icarus is a damn good pop song. That's right: pop song. It rattles along impressively and the chorus is full of hooks. The ABBA lads wouldn't have kicked it out of bed, that's what I'm saying.

Secondly, it's refreshing to see kids actually enjoying themselves in a music video. Let's face it, whenever you see children in a music video, the odds are that they're there, swaying along self-consciously,  to prop up some drippy ballad about world peace, the environment or - worst of all - Christmas. They seem to be having a lot more fun here, throwing metal shapes and playing air guitar (and check out the cardboard guitar on the left of the front row - it's 1979 all over again).

The last point that occurred to me was that, back when this came out in 1983, if a primary school child turned up wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt they would most likely have earned a trip to the Headmaster's office pretty sharply. Now look. You can't say that nothing's changed for the better in the last 20 years.