by Jim Hutton
While the rest of us took the remainder of the day very slowly, Freddie had his mind on the future. Even though he’d just notched up his biggest-ever triumph in Britain, he immediately had his mind on his next project. He wanted to get back into the studio.
First, though, over the next few weeks Freddie planned to relax and do some serious socialising. He wanted to throw a fortieth birthday party for himself at Garden Lodge. Then he and I, accompanied by Joe, would go off to Japan for what Freddie promised me would be ‘the holiday of a lifetime’.
Freddie spent a great deal of time planning his birthday. He decided on a Mad Hat party and sent out over two hundred invitations for the afternoon of Sunday, 7 September. Some guests were so keen that two of Freddie’s friends from the Royal Ballet turned up a week early, complete with outrageous headgear.
I wanted to give Freddie something very special for a very special birthday: a gold wedding ring. It was to be a secret, so to discover his ring size I tried on an old battered one which Winnie had given him but was now relegated to the bottom of a bedroom drawer. It fitted my little finger perfectly, and on that basis I went off and bought Freddie a plain, flat gold band. I mentioned I was buying it to Mary, who thought it a lovely idea.
During the week leading up to the party the weather was consistently overcast. Freddie wanted his guests to have the full run of the house and garden, so we prayed hard for good weather and even considered sun-dancing. The days immediately before the party were largely spent stocking up with provisions and decking Garden Lodge from top to toe with flowers. Freddie was so meticulous that he personally oversaw every detail. Joe, Phoebe and I simply did our master’s bidding.
The garden was something of a mess, because Freddie was having a pool so that he could keep Japanese koi fish. There was still a huge hole in the middle of the garden and Freddie was concerned about guests falling in and seriously hurting themselves.
On Thursday, the night before Freddie’s birthday, several people were at the house. Peter Straker was there, which meant he and Freddie would be up all night. Just before I went to bed, I called Freddie into the dining room. ‘I wanted you to have this first thing in the morning when you got up,’ I said, passing him the box with the ring in it. He opened it up and tried on the ring at once. It fitted a treat. Then he kissed me and we cuddled for a minute or two.
He was never a jewellery queen, wearing little chains and twee bracelets. But he always wore the ring around the house. However, if he went out in public he’d usually slip it off. Gay or straight, a ring on your wedding finger tells the world that you’re attached. He wanted to give nothing away.
On the Saturday I was out shopping and came up with the answer to the problem of the garden hole. I bought hundreds of barbecue candles and night lights to mark out the dangerous area.
When we woke up on Sunday morning the clear blue skies promised sunshine all day. In the morning, as I placed my candles around the edge of the pit in the garden, Freddie was looking out from the window, confounded and bemused. When I came in he asked me what I’d been doing. I wanted the candles to be a surprise, so I said, ‘You’ll see this evening.’
The party got going by early afternoon amid colourful scenes to rival any Easter bonnet parade. Every guest turned out in a hat, ranging from the conservative to the crazy. Diana Moseley had laid on several hats for Freddie, made by different designers, but in the end he settled mostly for just one, a ‘bongo’ hat sending up the fad of wobbly things bouncing around on the end of two wires. I wore a big floppy hat, made from foam and covered with flower ribbons pinched from the birthday bouquets which had been arriving all week for Freddie.
Joe’s hat was good enough to eat – a box of chocolates with real chocolates on top. And Phoebe sported one which was a tribute to Miss Piggy. Mary wore a matador’s hat speared with a sword. All the band were there with their respective partners. I remember Jim Beach, Peter Straker, Trevor Clarke, Dave Clark, Tim Rice, Elaine Paige and Susannah York all having a good time. (Wayne Sleep was also there, but it was a doomed friendship; Freddie complained that once he had had a drink too many he became ‘a right pain’ and left him off the guest list for future parties.)
I, too, had a few friends there, including John Rowell who came in a hat boasting a tiny laid-up table complete with miniature cups and saucers.
The party lasted well into the early hours but, as I had to go to work the next day, I slipped up to the bedroom and got into bed. Just as I was dozing off, I heard the door open. It was Freddie showing friends around the house. ‘Sshh,’ he whispered, ‘my husband’s asleep. Don’t wake him.’ A little later I heard loud screams of laughter from downstairs and knew that Freddie and Straker were in party mood. I drifted off, never believing that I would be able to sleep through the din.
When I woke up, in bed alone, I could hear voices coming from downstairs. Freddie and Straker had talked through the night and were still in a strange mood. I got up and dressed for work in my suit with a white shirt and a tie. I popped in to say hello and goodbye to them, then went into the hall to put on my overcoat. As I crossed the double door to the lounge, I overheard Freddie asking Peter Straker: ‘Who was that?’
‘It’s your husband, darling.’
Freddie screamed.
I still don’t think Freddie had recognised me in a suit. Even though he’d bought me two suits for my birthday, he never paid much attention to what I was wearing.
When I got home from work that night he said as much. He told me that that was the first time he’d noticed me in a suit. I took it as his way of telling me he thought I looked smart.
4
A YEN TO SHOP
A few days after Freddie’s Mad Hat party, Queen bounced back into the charts with ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’. This kept Freddie feeling on top of the world as we took off for our Japanese holiday at the end of September 1986. It was a trip of a lifetime, and cost Freddie well over £1 million. Joe packed Freddie’s cases – one for shirts and socks, another for jeans and jackets.
Freddie had been to Japan before and liked to regale me with stories of his previous visits. ‘Really, the best time to go out is the spring when the azaleas are in bloom,’ he said. Azaleas were his favourite. He also said he was looking forward to buying things in Japan for Garden Lodge. He had finally set his heart on transforming the house, which still had bare walls and empty rooms, into a proper home for us all.
Our hostess during our Japanese trip was Misa Watanabe, who handled all Queen’s affairs in Japan. Freddie bought her an exquisite Lalique lead crystal vase as a present. It was made in France but prohibitively expensive to buy in Japan. The vase was far too delicate to be entrusted to baggage handlers, so we took it with us as hand luggage. But when we went through security, to Freddie’s annoyance the vase failed to show up on the X-ray machine and the security people demanded we open it.
We flew out first-class on a direct twelve-hour Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo. When we touched down at about four in the afternoon local time Misa Watanabe, a slight, stylish woman in her forties, was waiting to greet us. She’d also arranged for a small contingent of hysterical Freddie fans to be there, too.
Freddie introduced me with: ‘This is Jim, my new man.’ Then he whispered to her quietly for a minute. Although I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I could tell it was about me – and I didn’t need a university degree to realise his words were complimentary. Also waiting at the airport for Freddie was another trusted friend of his, Itami, a former bodyguard who owned a private security company and always looked after Freddie in Japan.
The drive into Tokyo took a good hour, weaving slowly through bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic. And when the car stopped it wasn’t at the hotel but outside a massive department store called Seibu. The shop had stayed open specially for Freddie, the ultimate shopper. He was in his element as he was greeted by an endless line of meticulously attentive managers and sales assistants.
Freddie shopped for
the next four hours. There were at least seven floors, and we combed each one for beautiful things to buy. Freddie’s battle cry was ‘Shop till you drop.’ He bought a lacquered cabinet in purple, cups, bowls, chopstick-rests and dozens of pairs of chopsticks – some, costing £75 each, rippled with real gold and silver strands. Everything was ridiculously expensive.
Freddie was already getting ten per cent discount, but Misa ran around behind Freddie demanding that the assistants put everything on her account. ‘If it’s charged to me I’ll get a further fifteen per cent off,’ she trilled. So Freddie was really on twenty-five per cent discount.
Freddie could have gone on shopping all night. He loved everything Japanese so much he seemed to want to own everything in sight. Eventually he was dragged away. Standing outside on the pavement, I was fascinated by the teeming streets filled with little black heads darting about quickly and smoothly like large worker ants. The speedy, noisy activity at pedestrian crossings was another remarkable sight: just a buzzing blur.
I drank in everything and Freddie smiled. ‘If a natural blonde walked by, immaterial of sex, everyone would stop and stare,’ he observed. At last we drove to our hotel.
We were staying at the Ocura. When we arrived, we discovered that Misa had reserved Freddie the hotel’s extraordinary Emperor’s Suite – a penthouse like no other. It was so large it even boasted a smaller self-contained suite for private staff to stay in. The main doors led into a long hallway, and through a door on the right was a magnificent L-shaped sitting room walled in glass looking out over mesmerising views of the city. The master bedroom had a massive en suite bathroom with a sunken bath big enough for ten. Joe’s rooms, the suite within, included his own kitchen and sitting room.
Misa had arranged for chilled champagne and canapes to be waiting. Freddie gave Misa the now only partly wrapped Lalique vase, apologising profusely for its sorry-looking state. It made no difference; Misa was delighted. Then trays of Japanese food started arriving and everyone tucked in. When Misa and her team finally left, Freddie and I turned in.
He soon drifted off to sleep, but not me. I had my first taste of jet-lag and it drove me to distraction. At four in the morning I couldn’t lie awake any longer, so to relieve the monotony I got up and started watching Japanese television, with the volume barely audible so as not to wake his nibs. I didn’t go back to bed that night; I just waited for Freddie to wake up.
We had breakfast in the middle of the morning, and by noon we were ready to ‘shop! shop! shop!’ all over again. Itami was waiting outside the suite as we emerged, and accompanied us to the lobby. Here four or five quiet fans were waiting patiently for Freddie, each bearing a small, exquisitely wrapped gift. As Freddie thanked them, signed autographs and posed for photographs, I was told that this particular group of Queen fans were so dedicated they followed the band everywhere they went around the world.
One of the first ports of call on the shopping trip was a very modern fashion designer called Jun, whose trendy clothes Freddie adored. From there we moved to a shop called Beverly Hills, where Freddie fell in love with a suit. It was a cross between tan and grey in colour and had a shiny finish, an effect Freddie loved. The trouble was, the suit was too big for him. Then Freddie looked around and found another suit he liked which did fit. So he turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t you try the other suit on?’ I did, and it fitted perfectly. But I said I didn’t want it and gave it back to the assistant.
We ran around buying shirts at Beverly Hills, then went to other boutiques nearby. In one Freddie spent more than two hours buying silk ties, including a number of white ones, most costing £75 or more. He picked out and bought several ties for me, even though I’d already bought some.
Until that day I don’t think Freddie had ever owned a tie in his life. But he quickly made up for lost time in that shop, because he must have bought over a hundred. The silliest thing about the tie-shopping experience was that Freddie couldn’t actually knot a tie. He was a magpie and loved buying things to hoard, knowing perfectly well that he’d be lucky to get around to wearing everything even once. Whenever he wanted to wear one he usually came looking for me. ‘Jim!’ he’d call out hopelessly, ‘Help me, will you?’ When it came to settling his bill he actually ran out of cash, having set out with wads of the stuff. Joe and I emptied our wallets and pooled what we had to make up the shortfall. If we hadn’t come up with enough to bail Freddie out, he would simply have reserved all the ties and sent one of us over to pay for them later.
We went to the Ginza, an area of Tokyo similar to London’s Soho and packed with electronic gadgetry shops. Freddie was not very good with electronic gadgets but marvelled at hi-tech wizardry. He spent another fortune on several personal organisers, and when we got outside he gave me one of them.
Back at the hotel we could barely get into the hallway. All the things Freddie had bought at Seibu had been delivered. The boxes were stacked high on either side and represented Freddie’s £250,000 shopping spree.
It became clear that, large as the Emperor Suite was, it would be impractical to have all Freddie’s shopping sent to the hotel. So from then on everything was sent directly to the warehouse for shipping home. It became Joe’s job painstakingly to list all Freddie’s purchases.
That evening Freddie, Joe and I went out to dinner with Misa and a friend to an elegant rooftop restaurant. Freddie wanted to wear a new shirt, but it was badly creased. I’m not sure why we didn’t think to send down for an iron, but instead Joe tried to think of alternative ways to remove the creases.
I came up with the answer: a metal hot-plate which was keeping some snacks warm in our sitting room. I turned it upside down and, with a bit of fumbling, Joe and I managed to iron the shirt.
‘Clever bitch, aren’t you?’ said Freddie.
‘I have my uses!’ I replied.
We each donned suits for the occasion, Freddie wearing the one he’d bought at Beverly Hills. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in a suit and tie, and I have to say he looked great.
Preferring to stick to Western food, Freddie, Joe and I tore into succulent steaks which in Japan cost an arm and a leg. After dinner we set out to visit a few gay clubs, including one which was a transvestite bar. As soon as we approached, the doorman recognised Misa and greeted her excitedly as ‘Mama Misa’. We sat down at a table and enjoyed the non-stop drag cabaret.
At one point a girl approached Freddie and was told to move along, so she came and sat next to me instead, chatting away in clipped pidgin English. A second hostess arrived, there to encourage the customers to enjoy themselves and drink a lot. ‘Go easy on the drinks,’ Freddie whispered. ‘They’ll try to make you buy more.’ Later, as we got up to leave, Freddie said: ‘Did you know that those girls with us were both blokes?’ I was speechless; I had had no idea.
In our first week in Tokyo Misa threw a birthday party for herself at her home. The three of us arrived, this time in dinner suits. Although Freddie drew the line at wearing a black tie, he looked sensational in a light blue silk waistcoat. On the way over we’d wondered whether, according to Japanese custom, we’d have to remove our shoes on entering her home. But while Misa was terribly Japanese, much of her house had a very Western feel to it. Our footwear remained firmly on our feet.
When it was time for the birthday cake, two arrived, the first decorated in plain white icing, for Misa, the other with a red, white and blue Union Jack on it, for Freddie.
‘As I missed your birthday party,’ she told Freddie, ‘I thought I’d have this party for you as well.’
That night Freddie became deeply engrossed in conversation with a Japanese artist and talked about commissioning a painting from him. Freddie explained how he wanted the picture to look, even suggesting with his hand flourishes of the brushstrokes.
On another night Misa arranged a surprise outing. We only knew were going to see a show, not a special event, so the three of us dressed in lounge suits and left by car. The journey was madness.
We trickled along at a snail’s pace because of the traffic, and what would have taken little more than ten minutes by foot took forever by car. We turned up a good half-hour late. What Misa hadn’t told Freddie – and as it caught him totally off guard he was not pleased – was that he was guest of honour at the glittering opening night of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats. Everything had been held up just for him.
Misa rushed the three of us into the hospitality room, where Freddie was introduced to the other VIPs. Then his arrival was announced in the vast auditorium, a massive marquee. As he and Misa were escorted to their front row seats, the entire house got to its feet to give him a standing ovation. Joe and I, meanwhile, were escorted to two seats at the back of the stalls.
Cats was staged entirely in Japanese and had been reworked from the original London production. Although I did not know a word of Japanese, the performance was thoroughly absorbing. As a special favour, Misa asked Freddie to call on one of the principal actors backstage after the show. He agreed on condition that he wouldn’t have to meet all the rest of the company. He was on holiday, and that seemed like too much hard work.
But after we met the star in her dressing room Freddie, to his horror, was taken to meet the entire cast. Worse still, they were in party mood. There was no means of escape without being rude, so we ended up staying several hours. Later that evening, back at the hotel, Freddie showed his anger at Misa for not warning him he would have to be the guest of honour, that it was a black-tie evening and that he would have to meet the cast.
But then Misa arranged an outing for Freddie that was so special it more than made up for the chaos of the Cats evening. He was taken to see the wonderful gardens and grounds of the Golden Palace, built by an early Emperor of Japan in the ancient city of Kyoto. We were due to make the journey by Japan’s celebrated Bullet Train and were told to meet Misa at the station mid-morning. We were met by several of Misa’s entourage, but no Misa.