Queen guitarist and wildlife activist presents new programme Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me

He graduated from Imperial College London in 1968 with a degree in physics, and turned down a personal invitation from Sir Bernard Lovell to work at the Jodrell Bank Observatory because he didn’t want to break up his band, Smile.

He began working on a doctorate in astrophysics instead, although he wouldn’t complete it until 2007 – the rise of his subsequent band Queen rather got in the way of his academic career.

So, when he began campaigning against the practice of culling the badger population in the UK, which is used to stop the spread of bovine TB, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that he took a scientific approach.

As the documentary Brian May: The Badgers, The Farmers and Me reveals, the musician believes the animals are not the cause of the infection and have been killed needlessly. To try to back up this theory, his wildlife trust has spent the last few years sponsoring a research programme into the causes of the disease.

He now believes he has the evidence to stop the cull and help cure the cattle. But can he convince the sceptical farmers, whose livelihood could be threatened by the disease?

That’s what this documentary aims to find out, and Brian is hoping that communication will be key.

He says: “I come from a position where I think it’s immoral to be killing badgers, I’ll be upfront about that. But if you’re a farmer and you believe that the badgers are infecting your cattle, you can understand why they would want to kill them. It’s very understandable.

“And what happened historically is that you get total polarisation. You get the farmers over here who are perhaps understandably resentful against the badger because they believe it’s the source of all their problems. And you get animal campaigners over here very resentful of the farmers.

“But you realise in the end that shouting doesn’t do anyone any good because everybody’s trying to solve the problem. So I thought, well, let’s try and come together to solve this problem.”

If the documentary leaves you keen to see more of May in what many people would consider his own natural habitat, you can turn over to BBC4 at 10pm for Queen at the BBC, which rounds up some of the band’s most memorable appearances, with songs including Seven Seas of Rhye, These Are the Days of Our Lives and, of course, Bohemian Rhapsody.

That’s followed at 11pm by the documentary Freddie Mercury: The Final Act, which looks at the last weeks of the frontman’s life. Queen night then continues with Freddie Mercury: A Life in Ten Pictures before concluding with The Story of Bohemian Rhapsody, which features Brian and drummer Roger Taylor returning to Rockfield studios.