While
editing photos for July's Hitchin Mostly Comedy Festival today, I inadvertently
turned the comedian Daniel Cook into the sleeve of The Miracle by Queen.
Maybe this is how album covers are invented: by chance
events. Perhaps Freddie was fiddling around with a primitive version of
Photoshop in 1989 (or an airbrush?) when he accidentally morphed all his band
members’ heads into a monster four-person amalgam. Either that, or Queen
genuinely started life as conjoined quadruplets that were separated by innovative
surgery, and that’s in fact the miracle the album title’s referring to; let’s
face it (or four-face it): they’d have to be incredibly fortunate to survive
the operation when you consider the nature of their overlap; they've barely got a pair of eyes between them.
I like to imagine it was Anita Dobson who performed the
operation, as the waiting list was too long for it to be done under the NHS. Speaking
of Dobson, I find it notable that she’s one of a minority of people on the
planet to have the selfsame hairstyle as their husband; it’s not a good look on
one of them, so why would it be better on both? I suppose it saves time
to have the same cut, and that time could be better spent sourcing sixpences
for Brian to use as plectrums or building signature guitars from fireplaces;
for someone who isn’t a Queen fan, I seem to know a lot of trivia;
must be something to do with a misspent youth.