What do I know about Freddie Mercury?
I was recently asked what I know about Freddie Mercury: here is my response...
Someone emailed me to ask, ‘What do YOU know about Freddie Mercury?’
This was my response:
In 1986, I was with Freddie and Queen in Budapest, for their historic Hungarian gig. A decade later, five years after Freddie’s death in November 1991, I began to research his life for a definitive biography.
I voyaged to his birthplace Zanzibar by air and sea to locate his Parsi relatives, visit locations associated with him, and to begin to unravel the tangle of his early life. Also in 1996, I went to Munich to stay with his Austrian-German lover, Barbara Valentin, and to County Carlow, Ireland, to spend a few days with his ‘last official partner’, Jim Hutton.
During the summer of 1997, I hosted a party at London’s Groucho Club – scene of a number of Queen celebrations down the years, and of which I am a founder member – to launch my first Freddie biography. Jim, Barbara, Freddie’s former PA Peter Freestone and other Freddie- and Queen-related folk attended.
The answer? I know the truth about Freddie...
