Freddie in Budapest p. 3

"Loads of meat for everyone!"

A few seconds later, Queen’s PR came over to me.

“David,” he said, “We’re all going to a titty bar now, would you like to come?”

“I can’t,” I said, “Freddie’s just asked me to come to dinner with the band.”

The look on his face was quite memorable.

After the reception, cars arrived to take Queen to dinner and I found myself in the back of a Skoda taxi with Freddie Mercury and Mary Austin, Freddie’s closest friend.

“The thing is,” Freddie said, “I believe in personalities, not papers, I’m not interested in us versus the NME, I’m just here talking to you. People do think that I don’t do interviews, I’ve got a thing about the press. And it’s not true.”

I think at this point I suggested that maybe Freddie should do something about all that, and he agreed. Either way, the next night he hosted a barbecue at his hotel suite for all the press, which was nice. But for now our small convoy ascends the hills around Budapest to something called a Hunter’s Restaurant, which may or may not be part of Hungary’s only private club. Either way we’re not the only people here and there is much local curiosity as Queen arrive and take their seats at a very long table.

Freddie told his manager, “Order loads of whatever the best food is. Loads of meat for everyone!” and almost at once food arrived, huge plates of rare steak with vegetables, and some plums loaded with curry powder.

I was seated to Freddie’s left, with Mary on his right. John Deacon is somewhere and Brian May is as ever affable. I remember one feeling – nervousness. Maybe this was why Freddie gave me some wine and told me to “loosen up”. I didn’t loosen up. In the 1970s, this sort of thing was – I imagine – fairly common. Books by Nick Kent and Charles Shaar Murray are always full of scenes where they go to bacchanalias hosted by the Rolling Stones or Wings or whoever: but my experience of depravity is limited to going for a drink with Jamie Wednesday.

Fortunately I was so out of my depth that it no longer mattered. It is around this time that I started trading jokes with Roger Taylor. He knew all mine and his are probably unrepeatable now.

Roger Taylor is an interesting man. Opinionated, well-spoken and confident, he could be something in the city or just an international playboy. His spikiness began to recede as the evening went on, a bit, as Taylor complained about a bad review of Queen in the Guardian. “The bloke wanted a hip-hop band! I ask you!” he protested, then asked me, “So…. what’s the NME term for fashionable these days, then?”

I don’t know what I said, but it was around now that things go a bit odd. Roger was sitting next to a chic young Hungarian woman, who was quite drunk, which bothered one of the security people, and caused our interpreter to say, “You better tell her to keep her mouth shut or she’ll be out on her ear.”

The young woman told everyone in Hungarian that she was drunk. “I’ve got an Oxbridge degree in classics and I can’t understand her!” said Roger.

It was at this point that Freddie leaned over the table.

“Don’t start!” said Roger.

“How big is your c--t, dear?” Freddie asked. There was mild nervous laughter at thus. The girl said something back in Hungarian.

Freddie continued. “Can you get it over your head?”

The girl pointed to her teeth, which may or may not have been a comment on Mercury’s own teeth.

Then Freddie gave her a cigarette and said, “Just joking.” The evening wound down. I went back to my room and wrote down everything I could remember.

The next night, the barbecue. Then the show. First there is striking support from local artist Z’zi Labor and a chorus of 24 women in Hungarian national dress singing Honky-Tonk Women.

Then Queen take the stage. I’m not a fan of Queen’s music (the greatest hits will do me) but they are a properly excellent live band, an extravaganza of lights and flags and crowns, and Freddie Mercury is one of the great front men.

We flew home. Freddie dropped a lit cigarette on the floor of the plane and for a moment the world’s press imagined a fiery end to their careers. I wrote the piece and that was that. Apparently it was the last press interview with Freddie, who was diagnosed with AIDS a year later. In 1991, Queen released Innuendo: with songs like I’m Going Slightly Mad and These Are The Days Of Our Lives , it’s one of their best and most heartfelt records. After his death May and Taylor continued to use the band’s name for recording, touring and even a musical, without Mercury (or John Deacon, who wanted nothing to do with any of it. As a band, Queen may be over: as a brand, they go on.

And Freddie Mercury remains the most charismatic rock singer I’ve ever met.