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Thank you Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor – how my 1990s teenage self found somebody to love

In her new book, music writer Kate Mossman looks back at her favourite type of encounter – interviews with charismatic, ageing, male rockers. Here she remembers the band – and specifically drummer – who electrified her as a girl growing up in Norfolk

While in pop culture, particularly in the work of the Young British Artists, the ironic pose was all part of the art, it was quite another thing to live in this dead-eyed way as an adolescent, to be unable to express pleasure just at the point your own heart and mind were trying to unfold. My cheeks burned at the presence of Mercury’s leather-clad crotch and onstage dry-humping, but for every overblown sexual gesture, there was a softer side – Brian May in his high-waisted jeans and too-short jacket, Roger Taylor acting up for the cameras, John Deacon with his bifro, looking painfully uncomfortable. In fact, it was produced by superfan and comedian Rhys Thomas (who appeared on Celebrity Mastermind with Queen as his specialist subject) working closely with the band and featured very few talking heads and some rare footage from the Brian May archives.

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