Given that - at the time - it was the most expensive single ever recorded, it must have come as some relief to Messrs Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon when Bohemian Rhapsody started to shift some copies.

Of course, the song hasn't really stopped selling since, so much so that it's made Queen the only band to bag a UK Christmas number one twice with the same recording - first in 1975 and again in 1991, following the untimely death of Freddie Mercury. And to think it almost never made it...

“There was a time when the others wanted to chop it around a bit, but I refused,” Mercury told Sounds magazine in 1976. “We knew it was very risky, but we had so much confidence in that song - I did anyway. I felt, underneath it all, that if it was successful it would earn a lot of respect.”

Ironically, considering that both Queen's UK and US labels refused to release the song because they didn't believe a near six minute track would get air play, Mercury's magnum-opus has gone onto become the most-played song on BBC Radio 1 (as of 2007) and the second most-played tune on all of British radio.

One those songs that flies merrily in the face of just about every songwriting convention out there, Bohemian Rhapsody has gone on to become one of the best-selling singles of all time - and all without a chorus.