Heroes #1: Prince Vultan

Not many people can lay claim to having made a career out of shouting, but Brian Blessed is one of the sacred few who can. He's loud in that awful MacGyver TV movie, he pumps up the volume as Costner's daddy in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and he's louder still in Blackadder. Nothing can stand in the way of Blessed's bellowing - his booming voice saves him from being the worst thing about Star Wars Episode I by twatty space-fish Jar Jar Binks. He's even got the balls to be loud at a young Oirish Colin Farrell in Alexander. Volume is clearly the man's forte.

Hang on... this isn't exactly the resume of a hero, right? Wrong. Because no matter how dire the film, Brian Blessed always manages to bring a smile to the face by walking around being beardy and, above all, very very loud. And, as nearly every fanboy will tell you, the cult status of Brian Blessed is founded on just one film. A tacky, camp 80's comic-book adaptation by the name of Flash Gordon. You know, the one with Topol and Timothy Dalton? There exists, in this film, a character so loud and beardy that he single-handedly saved the film from early hour Channel 5 rotation with his presence alone. And he's played by our favourite ear-splitter.

Prince Vultan is his name, and being shouty is his game. From the first instant you see him, you know you're in for a treat. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that he is sporting a pair of fantastically fake golden wings and a leather get-up that clearly does not belong on the frame of a rotund, hairy, Yorkshireman. Blessed plays the ruler of the Hawkmen, a race that consists of a lot of thinner, less beardy people wearing equally gay leather get-ups and kitsch golden wings. Blessed's first action as the mighty Prince Vultan is to threaten a moustachioed Timothy Dalton with a comically oversized hammer-type device. The reason he does this, you must understand, is an argument over a magic icecube.

From here on, Prince Vultan proceeds to steal the film in majestic fashion. Brian Blessed is gifted with a superbly endearing chuckle that he bellows out at every available opportunity, rather in the way that people type 'lol' even when there's nothing particularly funny to laugh about. Any occasion anyone dares say anything to him, Prince Vultan will immediately respond with the kind of bellow that would register as a small gale, most likely tipping over any livestock in the nearby vicinity - it's amazing that Timothy Dalton's styled hairdo manages to stay in place in the face of gale-force laughter. The man could inflate a dinghy from fifty feet. Prince Vultan is meant to be a villain for the majority of the film, but it's impossible to dislike a man wearing as tight a leather costume as he does - every time he laughs, you can't help but laugh along with him at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Blessed could play a serial rapist and you'd still end up rooting for him.

But his best moment is yet to come. Vultan finally comes to his Hawk-senses, after having left 007 Dalton and Flash Gordon to their grisly yet highly unlikely deaths. On hearing of their survival, he laughs. Very loudly. And then he proceeds to take his entire army of Hawkmen to take on a spaceship. This spaceship is armed with lasers, and Prince Vultan wants to take it on with a few stupidly-winged extras and his oversized hammer (presumably, the benny over the magic icecube has still not been settled). Predictably, Voltan finds intergalactic war extremely funny, and commands his men to attack the ship with possibly the most overpronounced line in the history of cinema: "Hawkmen... DIIIIIIIVVVVEEEEE!" Just think of the great man's bedroom manner. "Wifey... DIIIIIIIVVVVEEEEE!" It's a sobering thought.

The film in which Prince Vultan shines is awful, it really is. But it says something that this garish disaster of a film is worth watching purely for the volume-fuelled adventures of Brian Blessed's overweight flyboy and his booming laughter. When his bones are dust and his excellent beard but a fleeting memory in a few ironic students' minds, Vultan's relentless roaring will no doubt still echo around the world for years to come. Quite literally.