theguardian.com
Freddie Mercury had secret daughter, new biography claims
According to Love, Freddie, Queen frontman had close relationship with child conceived accidentally in 1976 till his death
Freddie Mercury had a secret daughter with whom he had a close relationship until his death in 1991, according to a new biography of the Queen frontman.
The book, Love, Freddie, claims the child was conceived accidentally during an affair with the wife of a close friend in 1976.
Mercury is said to have visited his daughter regularly and gave her 17 volumes of detailed personal journals which she kept a secret.
The woman known only as B – who is aged 48 and works as a medical professional in Europe – has shared the contents with the rock biographer Lesley-Ann Jones for the book.
In the book, reported in the Daily Mail, a handwritten letter from Mercury’s daughter, who wants to keep her identity a secret, says: “Freddie Mercury was and is my father.
“We had a very close and loving relationship from the moment I was born and throughout the final 15 years of his life.
“He adored me and was devoted to me. 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.”
Her existence is understood to be known only to Mercury’s inner circle.
The singer 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.
He chronicled his childhood in Zanzibar where he was born Farrokh Bulsara, to Parsi-Indian parents, on 5 September 1946, and attending a British-style boarding school in India.
It also details how the family was forced to flee Zanzibar in the 1964 revolution before settling in Middlesex, north-west London.
He wrote his final entry in his notebook on 31 July, 1991, as his health deteriorated. The singer died aged 45 of bronchial pneumonia caused by Aids.
In another letter included in the book, B explains her reasons for sharing Mercury’s journals after 30 years.
“After more than three decades of lies, speculation and distortion, it is time to let Freddie speak.
“Those who have been aware of my existence kept his greatest secret out of loyalty to Freddie.
“That I choose 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.”
Jones said she was first approached by B three years ago. She told the Daily Mail: “My instinct was to doubt everything, but 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?”
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