Epic faff. So it looks like you were right all along in your suspicions and were not imagining things.
Cost aside, they did say my pistons, valves, etc, all looked good, so my regular oil changes paid off, and the fact my cam chain has not faltered for 64K is also a sign of reasonable maintenance.
My bad, I overlooked this part of the engine, and I'm paying the price, but lesson learned.
I don't know what maintenance can be done to prolong the cam chain actually over what you have already been doing maintenance wise. Other people on here have higher mileage fazers without any camchain issues wonder if it was a previous owner that have caused its demise
The previous owner treated the bike as a toy, it was in a bad way when I bought it at 26,000 miles.
It had clearly been used, abused and dropped.
As you all know by now my bike's mainly a commuter, so it's not like I'm out ragging it all the time, the chance would be a fine thing.
There's a bike on Ebay with the same mileage as mine, from a dealer, basically saying everything is great apart from "cam chain rattle at start up but goes away when revved".
Be warned, that noise ain't going anywhere else, it's not good news.