Iron Maiden's The Trooper on a ukulele, by Thomas Zwijsen

Stringbending wiz Thomas Zwijsen has is at it again. The Dutch virtuoso, who has struck internet gold twice over the last few weeks, has made it three-in-a-row.

In late April he transformed Iron Maiden's The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner into a fingerstyle epic, while earlier this month he took up his ukulele to turn Run To The Hills into something entirely new.

Now he's picked up the same instrument and given the band's 1983 classic The Trooper a thorough seeing to. And, to add the epic nature of to the treatment, he performs the song in from of what appears to be a small castle. Or a large villa. With a swimming pool. While two dogs gambol playfully in the background.

"This arrangement is similar to the guitar version (rearranged for 4 strings)," says Thomas, "including most essential guitar parts of Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, bass lines of Steve Harris and of course Bruce Dickinson's vocals."

Last year Zwijsen hooked up with Ben Woods to launch a video for their flamenco-style version of Iron Maiden's Aces High, while back in 2014 he released a video for an acoustic version of Run To The Hills. In 2016 he collaborated with former Iron Maiden singer Blaze Bayley for a version of Blood Brothers.

Zwijsen's Nylon Maiden albums are available from his website.

At the time of writing Zwijsen's videos have been watched over 28 million times on YouTube, while his channel has 130,000 subscribers.

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.