Freddie Mercury had secret child, new biography claims

Freddie Mercury had a secret daughter with whom he shared a close relationship until his death, a new biography about the late Queen frontman claims.

The book, Love, Freddie: Freddie Mercury’s Secret Life and Love, claims the child was conceived by accident while Mercury was having an affair with the wife of a close friend in 1976.

Only his inner circle, including his bandmates and his long-term girlfriend Mary Austin, were said to know of the child’s existence for almost five decades.

Rock biographer Lesley-Ann Jones spoke with the child, now 48 and working as a medical professional in Europe, who 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.

The woman, known only as B, told the biographer that Mercury instructed her not to read the “more graphic journals” until she turned 25.

“He adored me and was devoted to me,” one passage of the biography said, the Daily Mail reports. “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: “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?”

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.