He is a rock legend, his band Queen are among the greatest in history and he is a scientist who has published books on the cosmos. Yet the biggest source of excitement for Brian May right now are badgers and an intimate tour with West End star Kerry Ellis, writes Chris Price.

For the first time in weeks, Brian May has given himself a moment to relax.

“I’m not too bad but a little bit tired after yesterday’s excitement,” he said with a smile, the day after animal campaigners won a debate in the House of Commons against the cull of badgers.

It was Brian who created a petition to get the debate in Parliament, which was eventually won by an overwhelming 147 votes to 28. Collecting well above the 100,000 signatures required to get the debate – the number stood at 164,671 at the time of writing – Brian is coming to the end of a round the clock fight: doing interviews, talking to scientists and updating his website in a bid to stop the cull, aimed at halting the spread of TB in cattle.

His reward for the victory is an intimate acoustic tour with West End and Broadway star Kerry Ellis, in support of the Born Free Foundation but his work still might not quite be done. The government is not legally bound by the vote in the Commons and may press ahead anyway.

“Yes, it is a delay at the moment but that was the victory we needed,” said the Queen guitar legend, who performed with drummer Roger Taylor and Jessie J at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. “If you were the government and you had gone through this embarrassment, would you fancy going through it all again in the summer?”

So why does he feel so strongly about it?

“About the slaughter of 100,000 badgers?” he said with a titter. “For no good reason? For a reason which won’t even help farmers? The solution is simple. It is vaccination of badgers which is already underway in Wales. We also need to vaccinate cows but that needs some red tape clearing away. We need to be getting on with it. The culling of badgers is a complete irrelevancy and was never going to work. It has been shown not to work so many times in history.”

He lets out a sigh. It is already known that Brian is not your typical rock legend, with a PhD in astrophysics. His latest book, the Cosmic Tourist, came out last month, written with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. Yet with animals to save, Brian has little time to indulge in his interests.

“What is going through my head is, why am I not just playing music and going for an easy life at this age?” he said, admitting his wife Anita Dobson is his pillar of strength when he gets bogged down by work. “Why am I trudging round Parliament and TV stations trying to save creatures which the government should not be threatening? We have an incredibly arrogant bunch of people in government and this is not the first mess they’ve made and probably won’t be the last.”

Does he feel duty bound to fight for animals because he is a world famous musician? “Yes I do. If I am trying to make sense of my life, that is a big part of it. Animals have always been close to my heart. It is just that recently I’ve found I am in a position to do something about it. You come to a point where you have a certain amount of visibility and power and so you have a big responsibility to use it to try to make the world a better place. You only get one life.”

One way of tackling his time constraints is by combining his endeavours, which he has done with this Born Free tour with Kerry. It came about after a chance meeting with actress and Born Free Foundation creator Virginia McKenna, who invited the pair to launch a new campaign in Cape Town. It led to Brian and Kerry recording two versions of the song Born Free, which they have released as a single for the charity.

Although this tour is an intimate, candlelit affair – a far cry from the stadium rock tours of Queen – Brian sees little difference to performing with Kerry, compared to what it was like with Freddie Mercury. Most famous for her role as Elphaba in Wicked, Kerry and Brian met 10 years ago after Brian saw her in My Fair Lady in the West End, which inspired him to cast her as Meat in the original London cast of his musical We Will Rock You.

“I love a singer who has all the colours in their palate, from the soft, tender balladic approach to the full power and passion of a rock band at full belt,” said Brian, 65. “I like people who sing from the heart. I much prefer someone who sings the song where you can still hear the tune. That’s what I love about Freddie and Kerry. There is no nonsense. They just sing from the heart.”

Brian May and Kerry Ellis perform in the Born Free Tour at Tunbridge Wells’ Assembly Hall Theatre on Friday, November 9. Tickets £39.50. Box office 01892 530613.