I’VE never really got Queen and watched this in the hope of being persuaded of some substance beyond the bombast.

Sadly, even though this was a well-made documentary, it didn’t really endear me to the band.

Fabulously put together, the film, screened over two nights, spliced old concert and studio footage with interviews with Freddie Mercury and new chats with Brian May and Roger Taylor.

What it did do, if you are a fan, is provide you with a chance to see some never-before-shown performances and gain new insight from the recent interviews.

If you’re not, you were hardly likely to be converted by the music and all the new stuff initially did for me was to confirm what I already suspected, that Queen were a group of privileged young men that, without the undoubted whack factor of Fred, would have been as dull as other similarly posh bands of the time, such as Pink Floyd and, particularly, Genesis.

Having said that, at a time when chavvy Cheryl Cole’s ‘controversial’ exit from American X Factor is the biggest breaking news story, Queen were actually anything but dull.

After a quiet-ish start, Fred, it turns out, upped the ante on the strangeness and Queen’s popularity soared as a result, though when questioned here the band seem to over-play the “we were always outsiders” line which, when you’ve sold hundreds of millions of albums, is a tad untrue.

Also, a strange bloke from American Melody Maker magazine keeps cropping up to question why four chaps would call themselves Queen and then why a rock band would title an album Jazz.

Still, Fred’s ever-changing but always strange accent and his variety of above-lip facial hair did up the amusement factor and more than makes up for the annoying and somewhat bitter-looking American.

Part two of the documentary saw the band reveal their mercenary selves somewhat, cashing in on a Live Aid performance to resurrect their career.

At one point, when Freddie’s asked which song on an album means the most to him, he replies: “The one that sells the most”.

Honest, I suppose.

Their approach to lyric writing was a little suspect too — anything that rhymed basically — but the band pulls together brilliantly when Freddie becomes ill and in telling the story of his decline and eventual death, Taylor and May are visibly upset.

The scenes in which, while much much weaker, he records vocals for an album to be released after his death, are truly moving and make for gripping, if sometimes grim, viewing whatever you think of the music.

That song The Miracle is still terrible, mind.