Brian May suffered a heart attack after injuring himself in his garden

In an Instagram video, the rock star explained: "I had an MRI and yes, I did have a rip in my gluteus maximus. It's so easy to make a connection, there's a rip there so that must be the cause of the pain, end of story. And no other tests were done.

"Now, a week later I'm still in agony. I mean real agony. I wanted to jump at some points. I could not believe the pain. And people are saying, 'That's not like a ripped muscle', so eventually I had another MRI.

"But this one I had one of the lower spine and sure enough we would discover that I had a compressed sciatic nerve, quite severely compressed, which is why I felt like someone had been putting a screwdriver in my back the entire time. It was excruciating ...

"So that's one side of the story, and I'm a lot better now. I'm free of that terrible pain that actually destroys your mind ..."

However, the medics subsequently made an even more surprising discovery.

Brian said: "The rest of the story is a little more bizarre.

"I was shocked, I thought I was a healthy guy. Everyone says I've got a great blood pressure and I keep fit, I bike, good diet.

"I had - in the middle of the whole saga of the painful backside - I had a small heart attack. I say small, it's not something that did me any harm. It was about 40 minutes of pain in the chest and tightness."