Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (pictured, looking dashing) may have spent the last three years as Queen Elizabeth II's master of music, but that doesn't mean he gets royal treatment. The 72-year old composer planned to marry his long-time beau, the younger 52-year old Colin Parkinson on Sanday Island - an outlying island in the Orkney Island chain - but have been told that the island won't allow what promised to be a star-studded event.

Davies and Parkinson asked Sanday's registar and Hell's Angel Charlie Ridley to perform the marriage, a request to which Ridley readily agreed. Now Sanday officials claim that despite Britain's civil union laws, the remote islands of the Orkney Islands don't have the power to carry out same-sex nups. Of the about face, Davies says:

Everybody can get married where they live except me, it seems. Ever since the law on civil partnerships was brought in, we thought that finally there was an opportunity to get married and to have a little celebration. ...[I]f we can’t have it here in the place we live then we don’t want to do it at all in Orkney; we’ll probably go to London.

For his part, Ridley - who had built a special railway which the gents planned to ride to their ceremony - promised to finish the job:

After spending over £50,000 setting this up I have closed the railway and I’m leaving... But not before I marry Peter and Colin here.

Okay, not really the vengeful reaction one would expect from a Hell's Angel, but it's good to know he's sticking to his guns.

As news of the stink spread, Orkney officials have said they may be able to reach a compromise. We're sure...

(Also, can we just say how fucking cool we think it is that a sir has asked a member of the Hell's Angels to preside over his gay-marriage. It's basically an absurdist's wet dream.)