Mary Austin, the former partner of Freddie Mercury, the iconic frontman of the British rock group Queen, has dismissed claims that Mercury had a hidden child.
At 74, Austin, whom Mercury once called ‘the love of his life,’ has labeled the notion of Mercury fathering a secret child as ‘implausible’.
Her response came after the announcement of an upcoming book, “Love, Freddie,” which purports to draw from diary entries attributed to Mercury and this alleged secret daughter. The book alleges that Mercury had a daughter from a brief affair with a friend’s wife. Austin expressed her ‘total disbelief’ at these assertions.
The book suggests that this was a ‘closely guarded secret’, supposedly known only to Mercury’s inner circle, including Austin herself.
However, Austin, who was Mercury’s girlfriend and steadfast companion from their meeting in 1969 until his passing in 1991, remarked: “I was named as a party to a story that spread across the world. And so, as I thought about it more, my disbelief turned into bewilderment as to how this story, referencing me, had hatched without a single person making contact with me first.”
She added: “Despite it being claimed that I knew about the existence of a secret child and kept it secret, not one person has attempted to contact me for a right of reply.”
Mercury passed away from bronchial pneumonia as a consequence of AIDS. The book alleges that an affair with a friend’s wife resulted in the birth of a child referred to as ‘B’. It asserts that Mercury maintained 17 volumes of diaries detailing his reaction to impending fatherhood, supposedly passed on to ‘B’. The book also claims to include entries from ‘B’ herself, who is said to be 48, working as a medical professional in Europe, and who claimed to have had “a very close relationship” with Mercury “from the moment I was born and throughout the final 15 years of his life”.
According to an entry from ‘B’, Mercury: “Entrusted his collection of private notebooks to me,” adding that: “Mary Austin, the wonderful woman who was to all intents and purposes his wife until death parted them, knew absolutely everything about him, including all his undisclosed secrets.”
Contrary to these claims, Austin asserts: “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.
“I have no knowledge of the diaries or them being ‘entrusted’ to a child. I was with him most days in the months before his death. If Freddie had indeed had a child without me knowing anything about it, that would be astonishing to me.”