Everybody loves Queen. Even people who claim they don’t like them secretly do, for all are powerless to resist the charms of one of their gigantic choruses. Put on their Greatest Hits – the one that has sold about seventeen gazillion copies - in any gathering and watch as people lose all reason, stick their fists in the air, and loudly agree that Fat Bottomed Girls do indeed make the rockin’ world go round, Yeah. There’s plenty of room in the world for the po-faced seriousness of the likes of Radiohead or whoever but rock n’ roll is supposed to be loud and garish and flamboyant and over the top and, most of all, fun, and nobody embodied that more than Queen, and no one in Queen looked like they were having more fun than Mr Freddie Mercury.

That being said, music fans should always be wary of the biopic. For every success like Ray, there are at least ten disasters like the god-awful Greetings From Tim Buckley. Added to that, this movie has had a troubled production. Sasha Baron Cohen had been attached to star but dropped out when it was proposed that Freddie’s death take place half way through the movie, and director Bryan Singer was fired for apparent “unprofessional behaviour”. So perhaps we should be grateful there’s a movie at all and more surprising still, that it’s a pretty damn good one.

A quick synopsis: Young Farrokh Bulsara dreams of making it big. He hooks up with Brian May and Roger Taylor of Smile after their lead singer quits. They make an album, get a manager, play Top Of The Pops and they’re off to the races, if you’ll excuse the pun. They record ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and the world falls at their feet. Freddie accepts his homosexuality, drifts away from the band, takes a big cheque to make some lousy solo records but is reconciled with them just in time for their triumphant victory at Live Aid. There’s your movie, and don’t go crying “plot spoiler!” for my next door neighbour’s cat could have told you all that.