Brian May has finally completed his doctorate thesis more than 30 years after he started work on it.

The Queen guitarist quit his study of astrophysics in 1974 to devote all his attention to the fledgling band, but he retrieved the work from the loft at his Surrey home last year after deciding that it was time to lay it to rest.

He has now handed the 48,000-word essay - entitled 'Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud' - to the Imperial College in London.

He said: “It feels very exciting. I will have two experts in the field who will now grill me and probably give me hell.

“But I have a philosophical view of things, a stoical view of life, that it will be what it will be. I’ve done the work and I’m proud of the work."

The 60-year-old - who has recently published a book on astronomy with Sir Patrick Moore - is due to finally receive his PhD next August.