Plans have been revealed to turn Seventh Son of a Seventh Son into a spectacular ice show, following on from the massive success of Disney on Ice.

Choreographer Luf Lirpä, already famous in his native Finland for his work in the national ballet, said,'I have always been a fan of Iron Maiden and I am so proud to get the opportunity to work with them. I'm hoping that the band themselves will be able to make a guest appearance, as I've heard that Nicko is particularly handy on a pair of skates.'

Rehearsals are currently underway in a flooded cinema in Turku, and Lirpä hopes to have the show ready for the lucrative Christmas pantomime season.

The idea for what promises to be one of the grandest rock arena spectacles in recent memory, came about during the writing sessions for Iron Maiden's forthcoming studio album 'Brave New World'.

Maiden bassist and founder Steve Harris told us, 'I brought the subject up with Bruce (Dickinson) when we were discussing ideas for the new album, and he thought it sounded interesting - Maiden's music has always leant itself to a more classical style, and so we were thinking of how we could work something along those lines into it. Anyway, the subject kept coming up over a few weeks, and we finally decided to try and do something with the Seventh Son storyline, flesh it out a bit more.'

Bruce Dickinson adds, 'As you all probably know, the initial concept for seventh son always included a choreographed element, which had to be abandoned because of lack of space in most of the theatre size venues owing to the chairs obstructing the skaters. We contacted Dave Lights to see if we could do anything with the inflatables that didn't fit in the buildings on the somewhere in time tour, i.e. making them into individual harnesses for aerial ballet performers suspended via helium balloons on preset tracks, but insurance issues prevailed after the unfortunate incident at Sir Paul McCartney's Wembley rehearsals with the suspended harrier jump jet made everyone a little gun shy.

I have started the script for the new production and it is going really well, with significant interest from Hollywood in a filmed version featuring Roger Moore as the Devil, and Tara Palmer Tompkinson as the evil witch.

I am really looking forward to checking out rehearsals when we do the gig in Turku, but Nicko is such a star on ice skates that I'll leave that part of it up to the pros!'

But the band promises this won't be one of your standard ice escapades. 'It'll be mega,' says Dickinson, 'the greatest ice-based entertainment that anyone has seen, ever!'

Work is already underway, with auditions scheduled to begin in late April, and rehearsals scheduled for early June.