Bring Your Author To The Slaughter

Yes indeed, it's a photograph of myself and Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden. We have swords and we're having a bit of a duel. The venue is St Paul's Public School, the year is probably 1994 and there's plenty at stake, notably self-esteem and personal safety.

This was all in the name of an article in the NME. I had challenged Bruce a couple of times and he'd ignored the thump of my gauntlet, resounding across the gossip columns. You see I was a bit of a fencer in my youth, and had even represented N Ireland as a schoolboy international. Why if truth be told, I had been the Irish Intervarsity Sabre Champion of 1982. Meantime I had seen Bruce in action in a London tournament, and I'd not been too impressed. I could take the fella, I reckoned.

So I did a bit of training, squeezed myself into the old breeches and got ready for the messy business. Bruce was looking a bit nervous. Like any rock star, his PR machine had massaged the truth and the common consensus was that he was a fencer of international repute. As we saluted each other on the piste, we both knew that this was a fable. And so the foils were engaged and the hits started to land.

I took the lead early on. Being a leftie, I had a bit of an advantage, and my muscle memory was taking me though a few old moves, like the quarte parry, disengage combo. Easy.

But the contest had been laid out in sets, making it a long battle, which was when Bruce and his stage fitness started to tell. He made a comeback, and crucially, we found the entire duel hanging by the last hit, otherwise known as La Belle Touche...

And Bruce got me, on target, a final time. I was deflated and mildly humiliated. Also, intensely tired and reaching the limits of my cardio-vascular capacity. My fencing career was officially over and the resulting feature caused a few cruel laughs.

Bruce was a decent sport. Never liked the music, mind.