The Queen guitarist Brian May has revealed he recently had a minor stroke that left him unable to use his left arm.

The band’s lead guitarist and astrophysicist announced he had experienced a “health hiccup” last week but reassured fanshe was recovering and able to play music again after being temporarily unable to control his limb.

“The good news is that I can play guitar,” May said in a video shared on his website on Wednesday. “It was in some doubt because that little health hiccup that I mentioned happened about a week ago, and what they called it was a minor stroke and all of a sudden, out of the blue, I didn’t have any control over this arm, so it was a little scary.”

May said he was resting, unable to drive and fly, or have planes flying overhead he joked as one could be heard in the video recorded outdoors.

“I really don’t want sympathy,” said the musician. “Please don’t do that because it will clutter up my inbox and I hate that.”

The disclosure came weeks after the documentary Brian May: The Badgers, the Farmers and Me aired on BBC Two, as the musician fronts a decades-long campaign to end the culling of badgers.

About 200,000 have been killed in the past decade on the UK government’s insistence that badgers are responsible for the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), which requires the slaughter of any infected cattle – about 20,000 a year. Tackling the spread of bTB costs the taxpayer about £100m a year.

The mass culls since 2013 have not been without controversy. There is no scientific consensus on whether it has reduced bTB – several studies have found it had no positive impact, and a recent study found a large-scale vaccination programme could help eradicate bTB in badgers.

In his video, May said: “The other news is our documentary has been very much in our minds and we had some great reactions from farmers particularly.

“It’s no surprise to me that we are not at odds at all with the farmers. We are at odds with the people who have been feeding them the wrong information.”