Queen’s Brian May Slams Channel 7 After Run-In With “Rudest” Cameraman At Brisbane Airport

The remaining members of Queen have just arrived in Australia, where they’ll be performing their Bohemian Rhapsody Tour in stadiums across the country.

Sadly, their experience so far has not been a smooth one as guitarist Brian May has been filmed getting into an altercation with a Channel Seven cameraman.

He took to Instagram in three lengthy posts to address what went down.

“No – I’m not all right. But I will be. It certainly ruined my day, and if that’s what you wanted, Channel Seven, then you got it,” he began.

“There’s a fine line between anger and depression, and I’ve been struggling with all of that since I got ambushed and harassed by a TV News team, fresh off the plane from New Zealand. Now, obviously I’m not a novice at this … I’ve interacted with literally thousands of news reporters, photographers and cameramen over the last 50 years. I’m not exactly known for being aggressive, even in the face of provocation, but this guy caught me unawares – one of the rudest and most disrespectful video cameramen I’ve ever encountered.”

He then recounts spotting a bunch of fans after getting off the plane and wanting to interact with them.

“As we drove out of the airport, I noticed a small group of young kids with Queen albums, waving a welcome. I find it hard to just drive by in a case like this,” he said, adding that they very well could’ve been “e-bay hounds” but appeared to be genuine fans to him who gave him gifts.

While interacting with the fans, things got ugly with a Channel 7 cameraman.

“Pressed up against the kids was a guy with a huge TV camera. I’d noticed him, obviously, but I had no idea who he was – whether he was part of the party of kids, or a third party. I just let him film for the few moments I was signing the albums. But these kids were clearly very moved by the meeting, and I felt they deserved to have a few moments NOT being filmed for public sharing.”

“So, in the nicest possible way, I turned to the cameraman and asked if he’d stop filming, now he’d got his story, and give us some private moments. He refused. He kept on filming, and aggressively turned the camera close-up on my face. That, to me, felt like deliberate invasion of my space, and downright unfriendly. At that moment, everything changed.”

“I asked the cameraman at least two more times to put the camera down, and so did the kids. One of them said “I’ve waited half my life to meet Brian and I don’t want it to be spoilt by you”. The guy carried on filming, and then I told him firmly to put the camera away, or else this would turn into an ugly incident. Finally, he pointed the camera upwards, and it was fairly obvious it was still turned on, recording sound. Now it takes quite a lot to get me rattled, but I was beginning to boil. Everyone has a tipping point, I think ?”

He alleges the cameraman then “pulled out his iPhone and began to film us with that.”

“That was the final straw for me. I headed towards him with the intention of temporarily separating him from his phone, and actually put a hand on it, before my security guy gently dissuaded me. And then I realised I had walked straight into a trap. The guy now had what he wanted. He could cook this up into a story in which I was portrayed as an attacker on an innocent victim of a newsman. He possessed the only footage of the incident, so he or his bosses could edit it any way they wanted, to make me look like I lost my rag for no reason. And that, predictably, is exactly what Channel 7 did.”

https://youtu.be/ScRFwM6-K-w

He went on to say that he wishes they had instead focused on his band’s charity gig for Fire Fight Australia or his sold out shows rather than trying to instigate an altercation.

“They could have run a story about how we’d come over preparing to do our bit for Fire Fight Australia next week, or about the upcoming massively sold-out show in Brisbane, or even about how we’d had a nice welcome from some fans at the airport. But no … they ran the ‘story’ with a smug introduction about Brian May “attacking” a cameraman, followed by a cunningly edited version of the footage he’d shot, in which I come across as an aggressor.”

He said he does “regret getting angry, but angry I was, under what I regard as severe provocation, and to me the behaviour of the camera guy and the Channel 7 News Team is shabby and shameful.”

The rest of his story can be read via Instagram.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV