Report from Wilson Chiu, winner of last years ‘Name The Plane competition’.

Out of hundreds of entries suggesting names for the specially adapted 757 comissioned to take Maiden, their crew and their equipment on the first leg of SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME TOUR, there were 16 fan club members who nominated ‘ED FORCE ONE’.  Bruce and Rod selected Wilson for his tiebreaking line “Timeless, inspirational, continually evolving, but always true to themselves, camaraderie that survives the evil that men do!”

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I would like to say a few words about the brilliant day my wife and I had at Twickenham and to thank everyone at the FC and IM offices for arranging my other Name The Plane prizes.

Since Bruce and Rod announced that my entry was chosen for the name of the Iron Maiden plane, I have gradually been receiving my prizes, first the leather SBIT tour crew jacket turned up followed by a signed photo of the band standing in front of Ed Force One which looked awesome. These are already very special items but I had been looking forward to the Twickenham gig especially. Still an active player, one of my other passions in life is rugby and I usually get to Twickenham a few times a year to support as many of the England home games as possible. So the journey to the Twickenham was a familiar ritual, except the tens of thousands of supporters heading towards the stadium are not usually in Iron Maiden colours.

Once at the stadium, we met up with Mary from the IM office who gave us our tickets and wristbands. We had a look around and caught Lauren Harris’s set before Mary took us to the ERIC’s bar, which you will have seen from Rod’s tour diary is the hospitality area for his guests. The setting was a bit overwhelming as there were countless photos of past England internationals and other rugby memorabilia. Then I realised ERIC stood for England Rugby International’s Club – not an area of Twickenham I would normally be able to visit on a match day! We had a few drinks and Mary introduced us to Rod. We had a quick chat, although Rod was very friendly it was clearly a busy time so we let him get back to entertaining his guests. We also met Andy and Val who both took time to chat briefly.

It was almost showtime so Mary took us to one of the two front of house tents. Rob the lighting director was doing final checks on the consoles and there were also a couple of video camera operators. Then came the Churchill speech intro and the show started.

It was a surreal experience as we were in the middle of stadium along with tens of thousands of ecstatic Maiden fans, but we were cocooned in relatively calmness enjoying the best sound with a great view of the stage. Rod was overseeing proceedings elsewhere, when we met earlier he said we were welcome to join him if we wished. But we were already pretty awe struck by the ocassion so we just stayed put and enjoyed a great show.

It was a unique and memorable day. And it is wonderful to know that by naming Ed Force One we played a very small part in the amazing and ever evolving Iron Maiden story. I would like to say thanks again to everyone involved for my prizes with a special mention goes to Mary for looking after us on the day. And finally a huge thanks to Bruce and Rod for the competition, and to the band for everything Maiden!