Freddie Mercury’s former girlfriend and closest friend, Mary Austin, has shared her scepticism over a woman claiming to be the singer’s secret daughter, who has spoken publicly for the first time ahead of the release of a book about her story.
Co-written with author Lesley-Anne Jones, Love, Freddie: Freddie Mercury’s Secret Life and Love claims that B was conceived by accident while the late Queen frontman was having an affair with the wife of a close friend in 1976.
Only his inner circle, including his bandmates and Austin, were said to know of the child’s existence for almost five decades.
The book, which is scheduled for release in September, draws on what B says are 17 handwritten diaries Mercury gave her shortly before his death in 1991.
B, now 48, claims that she and Mercury had a “very close and loving” relationship: “He treated me like a treasured possession.”
In a statement published by the Daily Mail, she said: “I didn't want to share my Dad with the whole world. After his death, I had to learn to live with the attacks against him, the misrepresentations of him, and with the feeling that my Dad now belonged to everyone.
“I cried and mourned my Dad, while fans all around the world mourned Freddie. When you are 15 years old, it's not easy. I had to become an adult without him… For 30 years I had to build my life and family without him… I needed to have my Dad just for me and my family. How could I have spoken before?”
B’s claims have been met with scepticism from some of Mercury’s closest friends, including Austin – who inherited much of the singer’s estate.
Speaking to The Sunday Times this weekend, Austin said at no point did Mercury tell her he had fathered a daughter, nor did she see him write a diary. The first entry said to have been written was on 20 June 1976, while she was still living with the “Bohemian Rhapsody” star.
Austin met Mercury when she was 19 and he was 23, a year before Queen were formed. They lived together in London for years before, in late 1976, the singer told her about his sexuality. They remained close, with Mercury saying in 1985: “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.”
“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.
She continued: “The truth is that I am simply not the guardian of such a secret. 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, she 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.”
Last month, Anita Dobson shared the reaction of her husband, Mercury’s Queen bandmate Brian May, after B’s claims were made public.
She told 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.”
B told the Mail that she was “devastated” by Austin’s response: “For 34 years, the truth of Freddie's life has been distorted, twisted and rewritten, but she said nothing - with the exception of her comment about the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, which she called ‘artistic licence’.
“Here, she has not yet read the book, yet she apparently makes this statement. I don't understand why.”
Jones has claimed that Mercury provided for her through a private legal arrangement, which she said explained why there would be no mention of B in Mercury’s will.
Asked on social media whether a DNA test had been arranged to prove that B was Mercury’s daughter, she responded: “Please rest assured that the requisite verification was obtained, legal teams have been involved, but that such measures are private and not shared publicly.”
Austin said that the narrative surrounding the book’s origin had been “baffling”, stating that there was no provision in Mercury’s will for “any kind of secret trust”, while nothing of that nature had ever gone through his estate accounts, to her knowledge.
Austin, who is famously private and rarely gives interviews, said she felt compelled to speak out in order to “prevent my silence being interpreted as confirmation... speaking now is not a decision I have taken lightly”.
Her remarks land amid ongoing controversy surrounding the now-disputed nature memoir, The Salt Path, whose author Raynor Winn has been accused of fabricating large parts of the book. Winn has called the claims against her book “highly misleading”.
Austin told The Sunday Times that she hoped that Whitefox, the publishers of B’s book, had “rigorously investigated the veracity of the claims and satisfied itself this book aligns with its, and the industry’s, values and ethics.”
Whitefox said in a statement to The Sunday Times: “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.”
