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In an interview with HARDtalk's Stephen Sackur, former Queen guitarist Brian May exclusively reveals that Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen has signed up to play Freddie Mercury in a film which will focus on the years leading up to Queen's appearance at the Live Aid concert in 1985. Production is set to begin next year. He also speaks of his battle with depression and his views on the class issues that surround fox-hunting.

The following are key quotes from the interview. Please credit HARDtalk on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World News.

On Sacha Baron Cohen playing Freddie Mercury:

Stephen Sackur: "You're involved in a film about Queen..."

Brian May: "We are indeed. It's sort of been leaked hasn't it? I think I can leak a little more. We have Peter Morgan on board, who's writing a script for the film, which will be about Freddie. I think we'll try and keep ourselves out of it as much as we can...

SS: "Who's playing Freddie Mercury?"

BM: "Well we have Sacha Baron Cohen, which will probably be a shock to a lot of people, but he's been talking with us for a long time. He's been in on this project since we started talking about it seriously with Peter Morgan a couple of years ago."

On suffering depression:

BM: "Strangely enough, I lost my dad and I lost Freddie, and my marriage broke up all in the same year. That really did tip me over and I think it took a long time to recover from that…"

SS: "Was that clinical depression?"

BM: "Yeah I got very, very depressed I have a couple of times in my life yeah. It's a very serious thing, if you’re really, really depressed you'd cut your legs off to get rid of that feeling…"

On fox-hunting:

BM: "I resisted for a long time the idea that it was a class issue but I'm afraid I've come round more to the idea that it is….I think there is an element of 'we are the upper class and we have power, we can run riot over the countryside, we can kill your pets and we can hunt whatever we want'…I do think there is a connection between that old sort of ruling class mentality and fox-hunting - I sort of resisted it but I think so."

The clip is available online .

Notes to editors:

You can watch the full HARDtalk interview on Thursday 23rd September 2010 on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World News at 0330, 0830, 1530, 2030 GMT and Friday 24th September on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News Channel at 0430 and 2330 BST.