Queen's Brian May turned down Strictly Come Dancing offer: "It's not his thing"

8 July 2025, 15:57 | Updated: 8 July 2025, 16:06

Brian May of Queen performing live in Oslo in July 2022. Picture: Anne-Marie Forker / Alamy

According to his wife Anita Dobson, the legendary Queen guitarist was asked to appear on the famous dancing competition, but it's "not his thing".

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Sir Brian May turned down an offer for Strictly Come Dancing, revealed his wife Anita Dobson.

The actress and former EastEnders star appeared on the celebrity dancing competition back herself back in 2011 and revealed the legendary Queen guitarist has also been asked to take part.

Speaking in the new issue of Best magazine, the 76-year-old star of stage and screen said: "They asked Brian as well, but it's not his thing."

The Doctor Who actress hasn't danced since and also said doesn't consider herself a dancer or a singer.

Quizzed if she still keeps up with the skills she learned on the much-loved show, she replied: "No, I was never a dancer.

"I was just one lucky girl. I could carry a tune - I'm not a singer, and I could move well, and I've got that musical thing where I'm very upbeat and happy, so I'll have a go."

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It seems that Strictly isn't the only thing May has turned down in his career either as he also admitted the band once blocked a gangsta rap artist from sampling Queen's music, because they didn't align with their beliefs.

Talking about lending their music to others, the Bohemian Rhapsody rocker told MOJO Magazine: "We have stopped them being used to promote violence or abuse, during the heyday of gangster rap when someone wanted to sample it in a song, we thought was abusive to women.

"But otherwise, our songs are for everyone. All art is theft."

May also revealed that there was one occasion when Queen vetoed a "grand idea" that came from none other than their late frontman Freddie Mercury.

"Deep down Freddie was one of the shyest people I've ever met," he recalled to the outlet. "But he was so full of bluster, you'd forget. Freddie would always be excited, and his excitement would take over. He'd be so full of excitement he could hardly speak.

He went on: "Freddie’s ideas were off the wall and cheeky and different — and we tended to encourage them. Sometimes the idea he brought in was brilliant, and sometimes not brilliant."

May went on to describe one such occasion where Mercury wanted to call what was to be Queen's 1989 album The Miracle something with far less gravitas, but the rest of the band - then completed by bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor - steered him away from the idea.

“He came in one day and announced, ‘I’ve got this amazing idea. You know Michael Jackson has just put out this album called Bad? Well, listen… What do you think about us calling our next album Good?’"

"We all looked at each other and said, ‘Well, maybe we should think about it, Freddie'," the guitarist recalls. "It wasn’t one of his world-shattering ideas, but looking back, maybe we were wrong..."