SHE is the woman who won Freddie Mercury’s heart and walked away with his fortune – and now she is about to land another huge payout. Mary Austin , former fiancée of Queen frontman Freddie , is set to bank £187.5million thanks to a record-breaking deal being brokered by the band to sell off their back catalogue to Sony for £1billion.
She already got half of the Brit rocker’s estate when he died in 1991 then another 25 per cent when his parents died. But Londoner Mary also gets 18.75 per cent of revenues from Queen Productions, which controls the band’s catalogue and also pays out to surviving members Roger Taylor, John Deacon and Brian May.
Mary these days has very little contact with them although she and they also serve as trustees of the Mercury Phoenix Trust charity set up in the singer’s honour. But her latest windfall is now likely to shoot Mary into the Top 100 of Britain’s richest women. She first met Freddie in 1970.
He was an unknown musician in his twenties who had moved to London from his birth country of Zanzibar six years previously, while she was a 19-year-old art student. They moved in together and in 1973 got engaged. But Mary has recalled the time, three years later, when Freddie told her he was gay, after they had been together for six years.
In a rare interview, Mary, now 73, recalled: “He said, ‘I think I am bisexual’. “I told him: ‘I think you’re gay.’ And nothing else was said.
We just hugged.” Indeed, their bond held fas.
