Have to agree with 'beaver eager' re the many-faceted instructions in a single transmission from the (admittedly very busy) ATCOs around London. English is my first language, and I'm sometimes rather pleased with myself that I manage to get the readback right and take into my head all the instructions that sometimes come in one quickly-delivered bite. Many of my First Officers have English as a second (or third, or more) language, and they struggle to gestate all that varied information in one gulp.
Also have to agree that this is one of the best threads that's come to light in a while. (It reminds me of the 'old' Pprune, way back when.) If I may add my tuppence worth for the troops on the ground: in an ideal world, I'd rather stay in the hold, (in an ideal world, I'd rather not hold!!!), but if you're going to send us on the scenic tour, please allow me to remain at clean speed as long as possible. In a 777-300, that can be as high as ~226k. It really starts to gobble up the fuel once I'm asked for 160k, as I'm forced to lower the gear to get that slow. In a -300, I normally plan on burning 1.3 tonnes of fuel between leaving the hold and touchdown at Heathrow (and 1.1T for a -200). If I'm asked for 160k a little early, (or get the grand tour of Kent or the Thames Estuary), the burn can quite quickly exceed that. Ideally, I'd like to be reducing to 160k at around ~5 to 6nm, and ~8 to 9nm in Cat II or worse conditions.
And to those who blithely say "carry more gas if you're going to LHR", it's not always possible. On previous types, I've departed for LHR on many occasions TOW-limited thanks to a healthy payload. And unless I have a very good reason other than "I want to carry a coupla extra tons for mum and the kids", for some obscure reason, the commercial people at my airline take exception to offloading revenue cargo or passengers to accommodate me.