Freddie Mercury’s best friend Mary Austin says it was ‘really difficult’ to inherit his fortune
Mary Austin and Freddie Mercury (Getty Images)
The best friend and former fiancée of Queen icon Freddie Mercury, Mary Austin, has said it has “been really difficult” to manage the huge inheritance she received after his death.
Mercury died at the age of 45 in 1991, from bronchial pneumonia which was related to his AIDS diagnosis.
He and Austin got engaged in the 1970s, however they split when he came out to her. The duo remained close friends and Austin becamse his personal assistant.
When he tragically died, he left half of his estimated £20million-£30million estate to Austin, including his home in Kensington, London.
Initially, Austin tells The Guardian, she refused to live in the house, but he told her: “If everything had gone to plan you would have been my wife, and this would have been rightly yours.”
However, she added that the inheritance has “been really difficult”.
When she moved into his home, Garden Lodge, his partner Jim Hutton, who was left £500,000, was forced to move out, something which “was all down to the executors of the will”, says Austin.
Austin, who is now 80, recently put the home on the market for a £30m asking price. She says when she dies, the inheritance will go to the Elton John AIDS Foundation, as well as her two sons.
Renewed interest in Freddie Mercury’s private life
Last year, a new book claimed Freddie Mercury had a “secret daughter” with the wife of a close friend.
Those who knew him suggested the woman could not be his daughter, saying they knew nothing about her and he had never mentioned her.
However the woman, known publicly only as B, claimed to have 17 of his handwritten diaries which she said were given to her by Mercury.
Austin also threw doubt on the legitimacy of B’s claim, telling The Sunday Times: “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.”
She added she had “never known of any child or of any diaries”, saying it would be “astonishing” if her friend had kept that secret from her.
B died at the age of 48 in January of this year.
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