Anita Dobson has shared her husband Brian May’s reaction to the rumour Freddie Mercury has a secret daughter.
It’s claimed in a new biography about the Queen frontman that the child was conceived while he was having an affair with the wife of a close friend in 1976.
In the forthcoming release, titled Love, Freddie: Freddie Mercury’s Secret Life and Love, it’s alleged that Mercury’s inner circle, including his bandmates, have known of the daughter’s existence for almost five decades.
However, it’s now been revealed the revelation was news to guitarist May, who was left shocked when he heard about it.
Ex-EastEnders star Dobson shared the couple’s response to the claim, telling The Mirror: “I went ‘What?’ I thought, ‘No,’ And I said to Brian, ‘Do you know about this?’ And he said: ‘Do you believe this?’”
She continued: “There must be lots of people who have children that we don’t know about. It’s just because it’s him. Because he’s iconic. And the type of animal that he was, it seems inconceivable that he would have a child with someone we don’t know about.”
Dobson suggested it might be “fake news”, stating: “If he does have one where is she – step forward.”
The alleged child, now 48, has worked with rock biographer Lesley-Ann Jones for the new book, which will be published in September.
The woman, known only as B, claimed she and Mercury had a close relationship “from the moment I was born and throughout the final 15 years of his life”.
Mercury is said to have given her 17 volumes of detailed personal journals, which she kept a secret until recently sharing their contents with Jones.
“He adored me and was devoted to me,” one passage of the biography reads. “The circumstances of my birth may seem, by most people’s standards, unusual and even outrageous.
“That should come as no surprise. It never detracted from his commitment to love and look after me. He cherished me like a treasured possession.”
Jones told the Mail her “instinct was to doubt everything”, but added: “I am absolutely sure she is not a fantasist. No one could have faked all this. Why would she have worked with me for three and a half years, never demanding anything?”
She continued: “In my experience of fantasists, and I’ve met a few, they seek instant gratification, publicity and reward. She has never asked for money. She does not want recognition.
“Both Freddie and her stepfather left her extremely wealthy. She was not provided for through Freddie’s will, but by a private, legal arrangement, so no one will find her mentioned there.”
Mercury apparently started writing the diaries on 20 June 1976 when he first learned about the pregnancy, two days after Queen released their single “You’re My Best Friend”, from their 1975 album A Night at the Opera.
The final entry was on 31 July 1991, when his health was deteriorating. Mercury died on 24 November that year, aged 45, of bronchial pneumonia caused by Aids.
B said she had chosen to share Mercury’s journals “after more than three decades of lies, speculation and distortion”.
“Those who have been aware of my existence kept his greatest secret out of loyalty to Freddie,” she wrote in a letter included in the book.
“That I chose to reveal myself in my own midlife is my decision and mine alone. I have not, at any point, been coerced into doing this.
“He entrusted his collection of private notebooks to me, his only child and his next of kin, the written record of his private thoughts, memories and feelings about everything he had experienced.”
Love, Freddie: Freddie Mercury’s Secret Life and Love will be published on 5 September 2025 by Whitefox Publishing.
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