I hadn’t intended to begin this series with this story, but the very recent death of Keith Flint of the Prodigy, changed my plans. A few days ago I was working at my computer when there was a knock at the front door. The neighbours were out, and a man in a van had a parcel for them – would I take it in? I’m very much a net beneficiary of my neighbours post handling capacity, so I leaped at the chance to return the favour. But what interested me more than the chance to gain a Brownie point, was the delivery driver’s hair.

He was more or less totally bald, not shaven headed, but proper bald. Except for two strips of hair which had clung on either side of his pate, and these he had artfully spiked and gelled so that they bore a (very) passing resemblance to the stylings of Keith Flint back in the ‘firestarter’ era.

Keith’s hair, and to a lesser extent the driver’s too, gave a nod to the horned head of a devil character. “I’m a fire starter, a twisted fire starter!” growled Flint, and “I'm the fear addicted, a danger illustrated.” The words spoke as much for the music as for the man, just as ‘Fire’ by The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, another musician with a penchant for dramatic ‘demon’ imagery and incandescent lyrics had done in 1968. The horns and the flames’ are a very recognisable piece of diabolic imagery, but they aren’t ‘original’ to Satan – the horns are pinched from the fertility deity Pan. Today they are an enduring symbol of rebellious ‘evil’ harnessed by a million artists, and at least one Parcel Force driver. But how on earth did Pan come to be mixed up with the fallen angel?