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

The 72-year-old musician was taken to hospital after tearing a muscle whilst gardening last month - but his health situation turned out to be much more serious than he initially thought.

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.''