and saw Bruce Dickinson.
I was aware that he is an eloquent and erudite chap, and my respect for him has increased. I could have listened to him for longer.
In my youth I thought Iron Maiden were an awful joke, I'm not saying I like it now, but I do 'get' it.

Thought it was overlong, and, yes, a bit dull. The Birmingham olde worlde went on faaaaaar too long, and inadvertently set a rather laboured tone for the rest of the 90-minutes. Whilst the pace was at times refreshing, equally it also indulged odd factors at the expense of others. May have worked better as a chapter-based two-parter, with greater emphasis put on the original movement in the first hour; then New Wave of British Heavy metal in the second, showing how - and why - it evolved, and went international.

For the best part, I've enjoyed the Britannia series, but by divorcing British outputs from their global counterparts it can risk, as I think occurred with last night's Heavy Metal, becoming too insular, and as a result, clinical. It might have been more engaging to see how Motorhead crossed the pond to influence Metallica, Megadeath and Guns N'Roses; and how the Americans responded with Glam Metal, etc.

Having been involved with a Heavy Metal project for C4, I know that certain acts can be sniffy about being lumped in under that title. I'm assuming Def Leppard didn't appear for that very reason. However, to write them out of the story was to leave a major hole in the NWOBHM story, as metal ventured ever more towards the mainstream, resulting in multi-million sellers like Pyromania and Hysteria. These in turn have their own stories to tell about the manifestation of metal into chart rock during the mid-eighties.

Producers will always tell the story based on what they have, however, to gloss over Zeppelin so much, and to completely ignore Def Leppard so much (and only give a few minutes to Maiden), and cut off before the rather bizarre, but nevertheless, curious tales of sub-genre acts like Napalm Death (who only appeared via that two-shot of the lads sitting on the bed, in a suburban bedroom) seemed revisionist to me.

Granted, you can't tell EVERY strand of the story, but nevertheless, I think these, supposed, comprehensive Britannia documentaries can be a bit too selective.

When BBC4 tackled the Scottish scene a few months ago, I noticed, and felt somewhat itchy about the lack of Love & Money, Hipsway and Texas. If I was a younger person, and used that documentary to learn about my pop heritage, I would have come away without any knowledge of people that played a bigger part of said story than the makers chose to tackle.

that you can only work with what's available, and if some acts are prepared to make themselves available to the programme makers and others aren't then the resulting output is inevitably skewed.

amongst the well-worn TOTP appearances.

Good to see Budgie on the Whistle Test and Uriah Heep (from a TOTP?)

I have a big soft spot for almost all the bands featured, from Edgar Broughton through to Maiden. I have always really liked Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson - they're interesting, well-informed, funny people - and they were featured heavily, so I was happy.

So yeah, I had a good night in front of it.