"Things can go very badly wrong"

But not too often. The Iron Maiden singer, aviator, business mogul and awardwinning everyman, Bruce Dickinson, returns with a new solo album, The Mandrake Project – Top 10 across the planet at the time of writing – and a ton of anecdotes about his extraordinarily successful career. Just don’t try and put him in a box. “I’m not a number, I’m a free man!” he warns Joel McIver.

- By Joel McIver

Bruce Dickinson and I are sipping Earl Grey and munching slices of cake in Rhythm & Brews, a pleasant, rock’n’roll-themed café that the Iron Maiden singer used to frequent over the 30 years that he lived in Chiswick, west London. Some bloke on a laptop on the next table appears to be eavesdropping on the Record Collector interview, but whatever he hears Dickinson saying, he probably doesn’t believe a word.

After all, how many people can honestly say that they’ve played arenas around the world, flown jumbo jets, dropped a rock band into a war zone (Sarajevo, 1994) and amassed a list of civilian, military, academic and scientific honours while still finding the time for solo musical, writing and TV careers, actively running an aerospace company and holding down directorships on a dozen more?

We’re here, alongside guitarist and producer Roy Z, to discuss Dickinson’s new solo album, his seventh since 1990. Like everything he embarks on, The Mandrake Project is meticulously planned, accompanied by three graphic novels and a comic prequel that comes with the vinyl release of its first single, Afterglow Of Ragnarok.

We could easily discuss the occult and philosophical themes of The Mandrake Project, all afternoon, before we even touched on the 44 years’ worth of work since he first appeared on vinyl (Samson’s Head On album, 1980).

Sure, we might work our way through all of Rhythm & Brews’ supplies of cake, but you doubt that would do him any harm. An athletic fellow despite his 65 years of age and an episode of throat cancer a few years back, Dickinson works so hard onstage during Maiden performances that he loses several pounds in water every night.