E-mailed to me from a friend: “Heavy metal ‘a comfort for the bright child’”

Intelligent teenagers often listen to heavy metal music to cope with the pressures associated with being talented, according to research.

The results of a study of more than 1,000 of the brightest five per cent of young people will come as relief to parents whose offspring, usually long-haired, are devotees of Iron Maiden, AC/DC and their musical descendants.

Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent “metalheads” are extremely bright and often use the music to help them deal with the stresses and strains of being gifted social outsiders.

I don’t know that I was all that gifted, but one beneficial side-effect I found is that a shared love of the music was a good way of making friends with big scary metal dudes which in turn was a good way to avoid getting beat up by jocks.