Brian May presenting documentary on badger culling

Brian May is to present a documentary about badger culling for the BBC.

The Queen guitarist has long been an advocate for animal rights and environmental conservation and the rocker will now be trying to bring to light the "tragic" culling of the critters in 'Brian May: The Badgers, The Farmers and Me'.

Brian, 77, said: "I don’t blame people for being suspicious of me in the beginning, because, you know, I’m a guitarist. You know I’m a rock star. What am I doing? Why would I have some contribution to make?

"I came in to save the badgers. I now realise that to save the badgers, you have to save everybody because it’s a mess. It’s a tragic human drama where people’s hearts are broken."

The documentary will air on BBC Two later this month and will showcase the "morally indefensible" effort to halt the spread of bovine tuberculosis – which can spread among livestock through badgers – by reducing the population of the animals.

Brian told the Radio Times magazine: "How could we be so impertinent to assert that a whole bank of scientific study has been wrong?

"In the 19th century, Queen Victoria’s physician single-handedly solved the problem of cholera in humans by overturning the universally held view among learned men that the disease was transmitted through the air.

"And a century before that, we were still burning witches at the stake in the firm belief that they were responsible for our problems.

"In pursuing the tragic badger cull, which has always been morally indefensible, we believe that science has made one of the biggest and most costly mistakes in history – hanging on to a policy that, in time, will be seen as no more effective than burning those unfortunate witches."

While it is currently illegal to kill or harm badgers in the UK, a new government plan has been put forward that will allow farmers to wipe out the animals in certain areas.