Legendary Queen guitarist Brian May has heartbreakingly admitted he longs to have one final conversation with his father Harold who died of cancer in 1991 at the age of 66. The former draughtsman at the Ministry of Aviation helped his son build his famous Red Special guitar as a teenager, which he still uses to this day. However, the instrument became a bone of contention between the pair when Brian, 78, eschewed academia to pursue a career in music and the iconic star confessed they had "unfinished business" at the time of Harold's death.

"If I could have one last conversation with anyone it would be my dad. Because it was unfinished business. I never got the chance to wrap things up...I was very close with him growing up. He encouraged me in many ways, including helping me build my guitar, despite the fact that later on he thought I was throwing my life away by becoming what he regarded as a pop star rather than a scientist...," he reflected.

"When I went back to my PhD I had this very strong feeling of making my dad proud. We never stop wanting to please our parents," he said in a 2019 chat with Big Issue.

Brian finally completed his thesis A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud 37 years after he began, recieving his doctorate from London's Imperial College in 2007.

He has previously spoken about his estrangment from his father explaining: "My dad felt that he'd sacrificed a lot in order to give me a good education, to give me the opportunity to get a 'proper' job. And he felt I chucked it all away to become a pop star.

"He thought there was not a snowball's chance in hell of us getting anywhere, and he was right. The chances were against us. But we had this insane belief, we had some talent, and we were very lucky," he said.

He said the pair were estranged for around a year and a half as Harold remained upset by Brian's decision.

"I remember saying to my dad: 'You helped me do this. You made the guitar with me, for God's sake, you can't be that upset about it.

"But he was. He didn't see it as a life pursuit. He changed his mind eventually, much later," Brian recalled in a 2021 interview with The Guardian.

The pair eventually reconciled in 1977 when Brian flew his parents to New York on Concorde for Queen's Madison Square Garden show. In true English fashion, father and son shook hands backstage and that was the end of the matter.