Queen star Brian May has revealed he was recently rushed to hospital after suffering what he has described as a “small heart attack”.

Earlier this month, the acclaimed guitarist raised eyebrows when he revealed he’d suffered an injury to his buttocks that had left him in “relentless” pain.

However, in a new Instagram video, he admitted that he’d suffered a far more serious health scare “in the middle of the whole saga”.

“The rest of the story is a little more bizarre,” Brian explained. “A bit more shocking. Well, I was shocked because I thought I was a pretty healthy guy and everyone says ’you’ve got great blood pressure, you’ve got a great heart rate… but anyway, in the middle of the whole saga of the painful backside, I had a small heart attack.”

He continued: “I say small, it’s not something that did me any harm, it was about 40 minutes of pain in my chest and tightness and that feeling in the arms, and sweating, you kinda know, you’ve heard, ‘is this a heart attack?’.”

He was then driven to hospital by his doctor, where after an angiogram, he was then taken to a second facility as an emergency patient.

While some doctors told Brian he should undergo open heart surgery and a triple bypass, others told him he would need three stents put in his heart, opting for the latter.

The procedure, he noted, was a success, adding: “I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I think I’m in good shape for some time to come.

“I didn’t die, I came out and I would have been full of beans if it wasn’t for the leg… I was very near death because of this, but the pain I had was from something completely different. ’But I’m good, I’m here, and I’m ready to rock.”

In the video caption, he also joked about the Queen album Sheer Heart Attack, commenting: “I think I always worried a little bit about that album title. I wondered if it might upset some people who had actually had heart attacks.

“I’m actually quite relieved now that I’m in that club – and I don’t find it upsetting at all!”

Brian has been a member of Queen since the early 1970s, and continued to perform with the group and guest vocalist Adam Lambert, including earlier this year, where they recreated their iconic Live Aid set at a benefit concert for the Australian bushfires crisis.

In 2018, he was portrayed by Gwilym Lee in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which earned a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards, despite a decidedly mixed reception from critics.