I HAVE heard Freddie Mercury’s incredible voice described in many ways over the years. But no one has ever quite put it like his Queen bandmate Roger Taylor , who said the late frontman’s vocals took a lot of work before he nailed them. “I don’t think you realise how dreadful he sounded before,” Roger told me at the launch of the band’s ­remastered debut album Queen 1 at the Ham Yard Hotel in London.

“I mean, he sounded like some manic goat. He sounded extraordinary, his vibrato. “My mother’s face when she saw him .

. . ” Quick to defend Fred, Brian May added: “He turned out to be our wonderful Freddie whom we will never forget.

He became this colossal force who could reach to the back of any gig or a stadium in Argentina. He reached everyone.” During the chat, the pair also took a pop at the BBC, which, they said, snubbed them for years before the band landed a lucky break.

Roger said: “We could not get on Top Of The Pops, which was being filmed at the BBC weather studio – about the size of the average bathroom. “And someone cancelled, it might have been David Bowie, and we got the slot and that was the breakthrough for us. “Top Of The Pops, thank God, has gone.

” Harsh. SPIDER-MAN actor Tom Holland won’t be fazed by the controversial decision to ban disposable vapes. I’m told he quietly quit the plastic funny fags, as I call them, earlier this year.

His girlfriend Zendaya did too. It came after the Marvel star went teetotal to overhaul .