To Iron Maiden fans, Bruce Dickinson is the formidable frontman of one of the world’s biggest heavy metal bands.
On the side though, the Nottinghamshire-born rock star is something of a renaissance man: a skilled pilot, screenwriter, author, beer-brewer and, erm, swordsman.
Having trained with the British Olympic squad during the Eighties, Dickinson continues to practise fencing four times a week, he has revealed.
In an interview with The Times, the “Run to the Hills” rocker spoke about one of his many passions, joking that he quit training with the Olympians because he felt silly “fencing 18-year-olds”.
“Now I’ve switched from foil fencing, which is very fast, to épée, which is more tactical,” he explained. “I’ve found an amazing club in France, full of incredible fencers who all kick my arse. It gives me something to aim for — I want to get to the stage where only 75 per cent of them kick my arse!”
In the same interview, Dickinson discussed his “decent second career” as a commercial pilot, estimating that he has flown approximately 7,500 hours.
Though most of it was taking holidaymakers around and dropping oil workers off in Kyrgyzstan,” he said. “I’ve done 7,500 hours of flying in my life, but by the time you get to 65, you’re pretty much done.”
In 2008, Dickinson famously assisted in flying Royal Air Force pilots home from Afghanistan, an experience he described in 2022 as “extremely emotional”.
They had taken some casualties and they had lost some people, but they were all really cheerful – the best passengers you could ever have in the military,” he told his audience during his An Evening with Bruce Dickinson tour.
As we were coming into land, we stopped and we blew the reverse thrust. We were looking out, and all really close to the runway were families, kids, all the families and wives and everybody of all the soldiers, and they were all [holding signs, saying] ‘You’re my hero, daddy’ and everything else.”
