Freddie Mercury: An intimate memoir by the man who knew him best

by Peter Freestone

  Christmas Day began at about eleven at night on Christmas Eve. After his carol session, Freddie and troupe would go to the Copacabana which gave me a chance to get on and prepare the vegetables for the next day’s banquet for upwards of about twenty people.

  For me Christmas Day would start at about nine in the morning, getting the turkey (or turkeys depending on numbers) into the oven (or ovens depending on numbers). All the traditional vegetables and trimmings were prepared, including home-made stuffing and bread sauce. We made three varieties of stuffing, one of sausage meat, sage and onion, then one of tomato, mushroom and rice and finally the traditional chestnut, of course. Then there were the accessories, Brussels sprouts, a carrot-and-pea macedoine, mashed swede, mashed butternut squash, roast parsnips, roast potatoes, chipolata sausages rolled in bacon and lashings of home-made gravy!

  All very Famous Five, really.

  I would have made the puddings and cakes in September or October when they’re traditionally supposed to be made. I must admit, Freddie did enjoy fresh, home-made food. Whenever Freddie was going into the studio, we would make an assortment of sandwiches for him, although it was Joe’s speciality of home-made sausage rolls which Freddie carried in with special pride and handed round to everyone, eating perhaps only one himself.

  Christmas lunch would start without an appetiser at about two o’clock. Guests would definitely include Mary and her current beau, Jim Hutton, Peter Straker, Trevor Clarke and then it could also include Rudi Patterson, Graham Hamilton, Gordon Dalziel, Dave Clark with his friend John Christie, Yasmin Pettigrew, James Arthurs and his friend Jim, Paul Prenter when he was alive and around and of course Joe and myself.

  It wasn’t a necessity to watch the real Queen’s message to the Commonwealth and so after a leisurely lunch, the fun began. One of Freddie’s little foibles was that everybody who came to lunch brought a gift for everyone else who was there. It was a thoroughly sweet gesture for in that way no one would ever feel left out and everyone would have the same amount of presents to open except Freddie who had millions more than anyone else! The sitting room looked like a war zone of waste paper and great care was taken when throwing the paper away that nothing remained hidden inside. One walked through a sea of discarded glitter, ribbons and wrappings.

  From about five o’clock onwards, other people would begin to drop by just to wish a Happy Christmas. Generally the company would break into smaller groups in all the rooms on the ground floor and intermingle and catch up on what had been happening in their lives since last they’d seen each other. Freddie’s Christmases were meeting places for people who often didn’t see each other from one year’s end to the next. Geography, work patterns. Showbusiness knows no constant structure other than impermanence.

  The Christmas decorations remained in place for the full twelve days of Christmas and were dismantled on January 6. New Year’s Eve was always celebrated by Freddie but in the last few years a pattern emerged where we used to spend the New Year at Gordon and Graham’s apartment high up in Quadrangle Tower in the Water Garden complex. He started to go to Gordon and Graham’s traditional Scottish celebration when Freddie decided he no longer wanted to go to the clubs. A great deal of fun was always had.

  I remember one occasion when we brought the evening meal with us and Joe was let loose in the boys’ kitchen to dish up some amazing chilli prawns and rice; huge tiger prawns. The party would consist of Freddie and Jim, Gordon and Graham, Mary Austin and whoever she wanted to bring, Joe Fanelli and his current beau and myself. I remember another occasion when we had Freddie in stitches when two friends of Joe Fanelli’s turned up. Tony Evans, together with a friend of his and ably assisted by we boys from Garden Lodge, performed a Bananarama routine, they being the big girl band of the moment, the vastly more talented forerunners of today’s Spice Girls. I think everyone surprised each other at how easily we seemed to recall the dance and movement routine. I pitied the neighbours that night.

  Prior to these Hogmanay nights, Heaven was a regular New Year’s Eve haunt. A group of people would be rounded up at Garden Lodge at about nine o’ clock for a champagne supper and then the well-lubricated party would sally forth in time to arrive at the club for midnight. Fortunately, Freddie never had to worry about parking and nor would he ever have to worry about being turned away by the security bouncers on any door.

  Easter was always another excuse for Freddie to buy presents. He really did get the most intense enjoyment out of giving things to people. Of course he never needed to wait for an occasion but the occasion made him feel better about his indulgent excess. Other people’s birthdays of course were prime examples of these convenient moments.

  For any of us really close to him, the birthday present would consist of something special which he’d gone out and bought, perhaps as part of a bulk purchase but always with a specific person in mind. This was always accompanied by a card with a cheque inside it. One friend of Joe’s, Donald McKenzie, whom Freddie liked a lot, was very taken aback when Freddie presented him with an antique Lalique vase, knowing that Freddie had bought it just a short while earlier at auction.

  Gifts, for Freddie, meant first and foremost the thought. So many people would say to him, “Oh, what can we buy you? You’ve already got everything and whatever you want you can just go out and buy!”

  On the contrary. Freddie on more than one occasion was incredibly bowled over by a gift that might have very little monetary value but the thought put behind it would stand out a mile and make it priceless. Anybody who knew Freddie knew of his pet adorations, ‘pet’ meaning either cats or fish, or ‘pet’ meaning adorations like Lalique and fine porcelain and art. So often he was speechless when he opened gifts from, maybe, one of the cleaners who had put a lot more thought into her gift than someone with a vastly higher income.

  If it was any of our birthdays – Jim’s, Joe’s or mine, even Mary’s – Freddie would invariably decide to ‘give’ us a party. Many of Freddie’s friends recall a telephone call from him saying, “It’s Jim’s birthday next week and I’m having a party and I want you to come… ”

  How much say we had in our own guest list was of course limited to being able to invite a friend or two but the parties were always wonderful affairs. Inevitably, they were crowned by some masterpiece of confection in the shape of whatever our current fancy might have been, interpreted and created by amongst other pâtissières, Jane Asher and Kim Brown (nee Osborne) and Diana Moseley’s sister, Fiona.

  Kim once made a wonderful cake in the shape and form of Garden Lodge and another specific cake I remember for one of my birthdays was in the form of a stage set of Aida with a pair of singers on it with numerous orchestra members in a pit in front of it. The last birthday cake which we had made for Freddie was of his Swiss apartment building, made by Jane Asher.

  Another legendary and totally eye-catching feature of Freddie’s parties were the prawn trees which we occasionally wheeled out from the kitchen. Very simply, they were cones made of inch-diameter chicken wire with individual whole prawns poked through with bodies facing out. It was almost something Salvador Dali might have come up with. The tiers of pink prawns were occasionally interspersed with springs of fresh green parsley.

  Another birthday of mine which I remember was in New York. It started on a Thursday evening and didn’t really finish until we got home on Sunday night, Monday morning. One long round of bars, restaurants, drinks… and of course friends. My present on that occasion in 1981 was a solid gold Cartier screw-bracelet. Cartier was often visited to provide presents. Although Freddie himself never wore a watch, it was as though he would make anything he had to do fit in to the number of hours available. If he had appointments at specific times, there would be others around who had watches to ensure he would arrive on time. Otherwise, lunchtime was when he felt hungry. If he had planned a dinner at home with friends at a certain time. He would always be ready for it as there were clocks all over the place, although never a timepiece on his wrist.r />
  He developed a dislike of giving watches to lovers. After the second time he gave one, the current lover, like the predecessor, soon became an ‘ex’. He felt that any relationship was cursed as soon as he made a present of a watch. On one occasion, he had picked up a lorry driver, to whom he had famously quipped, “What’s the queen from Queen doing with a queen from Queens?” although whether or not the young man in question really was from the New York borough of Queens is quite another matter. On the journey back to the man’s apartment, he passed Cartier which had already opened. Freddie went in and bought a clock for the trucker. However, I must emphasise that he didn’t buy every stray trick a gift. It just happened that Cartier on the aforementioned occasion was on the way. It was the first time I could remember someone having been bought their present before the sex had been enjoyed!

  I think the only special occasion dinner to which absolutely none of Freddie’s friends was invited was one of his parents’ wedding anniversaries which he gave at Garden Lodge before he had moved in. Just his family and Mary of course, who looked very good in a scarlet Bruce Oldfield couture which I had helped her pick out from a large selection and which Freddie bought for her.

  I feel I must also point out that Freddie’s drivers were also an integral part of his life and our household. In New York it was a man who was nicknamed ‘Lori’ as his surname was Anderson and in London, in the time I knew Freddie, he had three drivers who always acted as his security bodyguards as well.

  The first was Peter Jones, nicknamed Gemma, of course, who remained with Freddie for quite a few years, including the beginning of the Munich period. After he and Freddie parted company, which was not a very amicable split, Freddie gave Peter Jones every opportunity to redeem himself. Basically, the way I remember it, Peter lost his international licence in Munich after a drink-driving conviction and then lost his licence again in England. Peter never officially informed Freddie. He simply didn’t ring in. If only he had rung in, Freddie would have kept him on doing other security work. Freddie loathed sacking people and would have always found an alternative. Because Peter never communicated over a period of two weeks, and because Freddie discovered the truth of the situation from other sources, the questions of honesty and loyalty became involved and Freddie was unable to exercise his prerogative of mercy. It then became acrimonious and Peter suffered as much as Freddie, who went through the tortures of the damned in parting company so unnecessarily.

  Then Gary Hampshire, on a well-earned sabbatical from the John Reid experience, drove Freddie and after Gary returned to Reid, Terry Giddings was employed from a security company run by two brothers whose services the Queen machine had often employed.

  Terry Giddings was a gentle giant, whose love for his vivacious wife Sharon and his children was something tangible and deeply moving. When he spoke of his children, his son Luke at the time, he fairly oozed paternal pride which I would have dearly like to have bottled. I could have made a fortune. On the occasions when Freddie wasn’t going to use Terry he would let him know in advance but Terry still often found occasion to come over to Garden Lodge with his young son, Terry’s doppelganger, for Luke was a dead blond ringer for his dad. Freddie adored playing with Luke who was after all ‘a model’ having appeared in several commercials.

  Although Freddie certainly never wanted any children of his own, he adored certain children of other people’s, especially when they went home with their parents after tea. He had a wonderful relationship with his only godson, Rheinhold Mack’s son John Frederick. One thing Freddie demanded of children was respect for their elders and unquestioning obedience, perhaps mirroring his own childhood and upbringing. Continued unruly behaviour really disturbed him and although he hated the idea of Garden Lodge being treated like a museum, it had in reality not been designed for boisterous children to go exploring in. Yet he loved the attitude of a child like Luke Giddings, an East-End boy with boundless curiosity because Luke knew how to behave and to ask questions. If told once, “Now don’t play around with that,” Luke would duly stop and never repeat the bad behaviour.

  But back to drivers and driving. Freddie had drivers because he hated the thought of driving and as far as he was concerned there were drivers who were good at driving just as there were cooks who were good at cooking and each allowed him the luxury of not having to do so but instead to write and perform music, which is what he himself was good at.

  He did once have a couple of driving lessons as I’m sure he must at one time have at least tried once to boil an egg but he loathed the very idea of either occupation. I think as far as Freddie was concerned, driving was a waste of time. Rather than thinking of the road and the route, he felt there were better ways of occupying his mind. Also, I think he was too impatient a character to have made a driver. Mind you, I could well imagine him being the master of road rage now! And of course, the nearest Freddie ever caught in the way of public transport was a taxi. But the likelihood of his ever carrying enough money to pay for even a bus was nil.

  As far as needing to carry cash, there were few places he went where he ever needed cash. Only twice in the twelve years I knew him did I ever accompany him to the cinema, one film being Raiders Of The Lost Ark which we saw in a movie theatre in Manhattan. I paid. He was thrilled at popcorn being thrown through the air from one group of friends to another and although it meant that he couldn’t hear some of the dialogue, he loved hearing the audience cheering out loud, a phenomenon one would expect from live theatre rather than a movie house. Partway through the second half of the movie, a fly very obviously crawls into the mouth of one of the actors playing a German soldier giving orders. For some reason, Spielberg, a man whom Freddie greatly admired, decided that the scene should not be edited. When Freddie and I saw it, some couple of rows in front of us, a large black New Yorker leapt to his feet and screamed aloud, “A fly! That man jus’ ate that fly!”

  Freddie was floored. He was in stitches of laughter.

  The second movie we saw I should have realised was going to be a disaster. It was in Munich that a group of about ten of us including Barbara Valentin and Winnie Kirchberger went to see Die Unendlicher Geshichte (The Never-ending Story as it had been originally titled). The story had lasted approximately ten minutes when Freddie turned to me and said, “I’m getting out of here. This is ridiculous!”

  Freddie never dreamt that even though he was seeing the film dubbed into German in Munich that it would at least not have English sub-titles. I think he became extremely frustrated. Although he had a very rudimentary grasp of German, it upset him that there were obviously a good few jokes which he didn’t understand and he could see the rest of his friends laughing. Going to extremes, he might even have been a teensy bit paranoid, thinking that they might just have been laughing at him not understanding. That apart, Freddie’s boredom threshold was so low that to sit in his seat for an hour-and-a-half watching something that bored him was an impossibility. There were very few things through which he sat all the way and, thus, he was always extremely particular about what he would go out in public to see. Generally it would only be to something where particular friends of his were involved, although on one or two occasions he specifically went to see something because he wanted to see it. Because he had been told so many good things about such and such a play by his friends in the profession, he would trust their judgements and opinions.

  Films therefore he watched mainly on the television screen. He would never ask us to rent out movies for him to play at home. He did have a few pre-recorded films and some which he had specifically asked us to record for him from the television. Two of the most played were Some Like It Hot and George Cukor’s The Women, a screenplay which he had almost memorised by heart. Imitation Of Life with Lana Turner was a special favourite. He loved the title. Curiously apt for a man like Freddie whose own life was in so many ways merely a reflection of other people’s real lives. I can remember him on at least a couple of occasions being in tears at the end of the
movie where Susan Kohner who played Juanita Moore’s errant daughter arrives too late for Juanita’s funeral and tries to jump on the white coffin in the horse-drawn hearse.

  Too much for a pop star in his own front room.

  Although this might sound superficial and dismissable, I have to emphasise that this was the everyday life I am trying to describe and which was, as such, incredibly ordinary. I am sure many people will recognise this situation from their own lives. Freddie’s was no different. While Freddie was moved by this specific scene I have just outlined, he never lost sight of the fact that he was being successfully manipulated by the director and the writers. Although it was, after all, only a movie, it was also only what he himself did so consummately in his own film-making on the videos as I hope I have already shown.

  He never made any specific plan to watch a movie which was coming up on TV. What could happen was that either Joe or I would see in the TV Times that there was a Marlene Dietrich season and when we told Freddie, he would ask us to video all of them for him as he knew he might not be in the mood to watch them as they were broadcast. However, he adored Dietrich and would quite soon get around to seeing the recordings, usually with Straker who was Freddie’s movie-watching side-kick. Freddie would whimsically decide that Tuesday afternoon would be movie time and ring up Straker who, if he were free, would come over and be Freddie’s date. Instead of a popcorn and Coca-Cola date, it would be more likely champagne and caviar canapes. Incidentally, it was because of his adoration of Marlene that Freddie jumped at the idea of George Hurrell photographing the band for The Works. Hurrell had legendarily portrayed Dietrich and many of her contemporaries.