Freddie Mercury once said of Mary Austin: “The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. We believe in each other, that’s enough for me.” The Queen frontman shared everything with Austin, from when they were a couple in the 1970s to his death some two decades later. She inherited much of his estate.
At no point did he tell her, as a new book is set to claim, that he had a daughter — and, she says today, the existence of such a secret child would be “astonishing”.
“Freddie had a glorious openness, and I cannot imagine he would have wanted to, or been able to, keep such a joyful event a secret, either from me or other people closest to him,” Austin said.
Love, Freddie, by Lesley-Ann Jones, claims that Mercury, who died in 1991 of bronchial pneumonia caused by Aids, had an affair with the wife of a close friend in 1976, which led to the birth of a child, known in the new book only as “B”.
The primary source appears to be what are claimed to be 17 volumes of diaries, which Mercury is said to have started writing when he found out he was going to be a father and to have handed over to B just before he died.
It also includes a letter from B, who the book says is 48 and works as a medical professional in Europe. “We had a very close relationship from the moment I was born and throughout the final 15 years of his life,” the letter reads. “He entrusted his collection of private notebooks to me, his only child and his next of kin.”
The letter continues: “Mary Austin — the wonderful woman who was to all intents and purposes his wife until death parted them — knew absolutely everything about him, including all his undisclosed secrets.”
Austin and Mercury at a party at his Kensington home in 1977
TERENCE SPENCER/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES
TERENCE SPENCER/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES
Austin and Mercury at his 40th birthday in 1986
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Austin, 74, has a wildly different take.
“The truth is that I am simply not the guardian of such a secret,” said Austin. “I’ve never known of any child, or of any diaries. If Freddie had indeed had a child without me knowing anything about it, that would be astonishing to me.”
If Mercury had had a daughter, Austin added, “it would have brought tremendous joy to Freddie, and everybody who cared about him — including Freddie’s parents. I believe that [Bomi and Jer Bulsara] would have embraced her with all the love in their hearts. But I do not remember Freddie ever speaking about creating a family.”
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Austin’s doubts about the veracity of the story follows the publishing scandal last month surrounding The Salt Path. Raynor Winn, the author of the bestselling memoir, which is now a film, was accused of fabricating large parts of her account of being made homeless, her husband Moth’s illness and their coastal walk. Ros Hemmings, the wife of Winn’s former employer, accused her of embezzlement. Winn called the claims against her book “highly misleading”, but the accusations have for ever tarnished The Salt Path.
Austin hopes the story of Mercury’s alleged love child is not taken as gospel in the way Winn’s account was. Yet since Jones’s interview about Love, Freddie, the alleged existence of B appears on Mercury’s Wikipedia page and the book’s publication may make more people believe it. This is what compelled Austin to speak.
“I would hope that those claims about me which have circulated in the press that I know to be untrue will not appear in the book,” said Austin. “I hope Whitefox has rigorously investigated the veracity of the claims and satisfied itself this book aligns with its, and the industry’s, values and ethics.”
Whitefox said: “Whitefox takes issues of accuracy, legality and ethics seriously, and we work to ensure that any project we are involved with has been subject to appropriate editorial and legal scrutiny.”
Austin met Mercury when she was 19 and he 23, a year before Queen was formed. They lived together in London for years before, in late 1976, Mercury told Austin about his sexuality. The two remained close, with Austin by his side in the months before he died. In 1985, Mercury said: “All my lovers ask me why they couldn’t replace Mary, but it’s impossible. The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. We believe in each other, that’s enough for me.” She was left Mercury’s home and 50 per cent of all privately owned shares in his will.
Austin says she has tried to live life out of the public eye
EYEVINE
“Freddie is someone I loved deeply and, for the last 34 years since his death, I have been very cautious about speaking to the press,” Austin said. “I’ve been focused on living my own life, largely out of the public eye, and, at first, I looked at these claims as simply another sensationalist story written about Freddie. However, as this particular narrative has grown, I had to say something to prevent my silence being interpreted as confirmation — speaking now is not a decision I have taken lightly. I wanted to carefully consider everything being said so I could approach the topic responsibly, most of all for Freddie, who is not here to speak for himself.”
The bulk of Love, Freddie’s claims revolve around the diaries. But Austin says she was still living with Mercury on June 20, 1976 — the date the first entry is said to have been written — and that they continued to live together for two years. “And at no point in the period did I see Freddie write a diary,” said Austin. She added they remained “very much a part of each other’s lives”, but that she never saw him write a diary, nor mention one to her — despite the claims that he carried on writing a journal until July 31, 1991. “I would be very surprised if it turned out that from 1976 to the final months of his life, Freddie was a prolific diarist.”
Mercury performing with Queen at Knebworth in 1986
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Austin also expressed doubt that the journals were passed on to B when she was just 15, four months before Mercury died, given his weakened condition. One claim is that B saw Mercury three weeks before his death. “I have no knowledge of the diaries or them being ‘entrusted’ to a child,” said Austin. “I was with him most days in the months before his death.”
Jones is a British author and journalist, who started out working for Chrysalis Records in the 1980s. She has written numerous unofficial books on stars from Kylie Minogue to Paul McCartney. In her book, The Stone Age, Jones claims that Mick Jagger had affairs with two of his bandmates and should be considered a bisexual icon.
In an interview with the Daily Mail in May, Jones said she read Mercury’s diaries after B brought them to a meeting in Montreux, in Switzerland. However, sources close to Austin say that Jones has not publicly presented any evidence of the diaries, nor does there appear to have been any attempt to assess if that material is genuine.
Sources also point to further claims in Love, Freddie that need further clarification. First, in her interview, Jones says that B was not provided for by Mercury’s will, but left money by a “private legal arrangement”. Secondly, when asked on social media if there was a DNA test to prove that B was Mercury’s daughter, Jones said: “Please rest assured that the requisite verification was obtained, legal teams have been involved, but that such measures are private and not shared publicly.”
“There was no provision in the will for any kind of secret trust and nothing of that nature has ever gone through the estate accounts to my knowledge,” Austin said. “To date, Ms Jones has not publicly produced any evidence for the existence of the diaries or a child, even though I understand there are a number of ways this could be done whilst protecting anonymity. The narrative that’s circulating about this book’s origin so far is baffling. So many things have been said about Freddie over the years, often without foundation, that it is sad to think the truth of a wonderful man might be lost as a result. I find this collection of claims implausible.”
Lesley-Ann Jones in 2016, when she published a tribute to David Bowie
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In the interview in May, Jones said Mercury “spoke to his daughter every day when away on tour or in the recording studio” and that the singer had a bedroom at the homes of both the child’s mother and her husband — B’s stepfather. After the story broke, the Queen guitarist Brian May’s wife, Anita Dobson, said: “It seems inconceivable he would have a child with someone we don’t know about. Where is she? Step forward. If she exists.”
Austin wholly echoed that surprise. “It is hard for me to regard the claims as plausible,” she said. “That Freddie was in the secret child’s life most days, and Freddie had his own room at each of the houses she lived. Not least in view of his incredibly hectic schedule and extent to which he is in the public eye.”
Asked by The Sunday Times for a response to Austin, Jones replied: “I am surprised by Mary Austin’s response. I approached her for an interview countless times over many years, but she never once responded. Mary was not party to a secret that Freddie had a child? I do not suggest that she was. Nor do I suggest that she was aware of or was passed any diaries.” When asked about the letter in her book, with the line Austin “knew absolutely everything about [Freddie], including his undisclosed secrets”, Jones replied: “For the avoidance of doubt, I did not say this. Freddie’s daughter wrote these words. This is B, speaking for herself — as she does throughout the book … She does not specify here what she means by ‘undisclosed secrets’.”
Jones also provided a response from B. “I am devastated by Mary Austin’s alleged response,” she said, via Jones. “For 34 years, the truth of Freddie’s life has been distorted, twisted and rewritten, but she said nothing … Here, she has not yet read the book, yet she apparently makes this statement. I don’t understand why.” B added, via Jones: “There will be no further interviews.”