The family of Freddie Mercury’s secret daughter have today announced that she has died aged 48 after a long battle with a rare cancer.
The Daily Mail can reveal for the first time that the Queen singer called her ‘Bibi’ and wrote several songs about her.
Author Lesley Ann Jones revealed her existence in the bombshell book Love, Freddie, published last summer.
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Lesley has today said Freddie also called her his ‘trésor’ – French for treasure – and his ‘little froggie’.
The Queen songs ‘Bijou’ (jewel) and ‘Don’t Try So Hard’ were written about her, she said. The iconic singer had a close relationship with Bibi until his death in 1991.
Bibi’s widower Thomas contacted the Daily Mail to say that she passed away ‘peacefully after a long battle with chordoma, a rare spinal cancer, leaving two sons aged nine and seven’.
He added: ‘B is now with her beloved and loving father in the world of thoughts. Her ashes were scattered to the wind over the Alps.’
Lesley-Ann Jones said the Queen frontman secretly fathered ‘Bibi’ during an affair in 1976 – and said last year that she has DNA evidence to back it up.
Lesley said: ‘I am devastated by the loss of this woman who became my close friend, who had come to me with a selfless aim: to brush aside all those who have had free rein with Freddie’s story for 32 years, to challenge their lies and their rewriting of his life, and to deliver the truth.
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Freddie Mercury’s secret daughter has died, just months after her existence was revealed in a bombshell book. Freddie called her ‘Bibi’ and wrote several songs about her
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‘At the end of her life, it was all that mattered to her. She was very ill throughout the 4 years that we worked together. But she was on a mission. She put herself and her own needs last.’
The book told how Freddie fathered a child with a married friend, and kept the child’s existence a closely guarded secret. She saw him in concert and would trace his tours with Queen on a globe he gave her.
The book is based on 17 volumes of journals given to ‘B’ by her late father in 1991 before he died in 1991 of bronchial pneumonia caused by Aids.
In August, before Love, Freddie came out, Mercury’s former fiancée Mary Austin gave an interview to the Sunday Times insisting she would be ‘astonished’ if Freddie had a daughter.
She said she had no knowledge of such a child; and maintained that the star did not keep diaries, journals or notebooks.
Lesley Ann Jones said: ‘Her cancer reared originally when she was very young. It’s the real reason why the family relocated quite frequently, so that they could access the best treatment at the time for chordoma: a rare form of spinal cancer that was always going to kill her.
‘She had been in remission for some years when it reared again. That was when she decided to contact me. She had read my 2021 book about Freddie, ‘Love of My Life’.
‘She emailed me to say that I had come closer to the real Freddie in that book than any previous writer or film maker – she particularly loathed Queen’s film ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – but that there were ‘still some things I should know.’
‘We worked together for 4 years to get the book written and published – on borrowed time.
‘Last summer, towards the end of her life, she, her husband and two young children undertook an epic trip of a lifetime to South America.
‘Against the odds, she was able to get to the Inca ruins at Macchu Pichu, her ‘bucketlist’ destination. When they returned at summer’s end, she went straight into a treatment programme of 4 days in hospital for chemo, 3 days at home with her family. Our book was published on 5th September.’
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Mary Austin, pictured, the love of Freddie’s life, allegedly denied knowing of B’s existence
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The revelation of Mercury’s secret child emerged in a bombshell biography of the star by bestselling music writer Lesley-Ann Jones, pictured, released in September
Ms Jones adds: ‘She was devastated by (Freddie’s girlfriend) Mary Austin’s attempts to deny her existence, and her denunciation of the veracity of the book. Mary’s lawyers, Farrer & Co, were heavy-handed in their attempts to prevent publication. They tried everything. They failed. After the book was published, they never contacted us again. They couldn’t find anything in the book to sue us for. ‘Love, Freddie’ is Freddie’s true story.
‘This news is shocking and deeply upsetting to me, but not surprising. I had known it was coming all along. It was a race against time. Against the odds, we achieved what at one time seemed impossible, given all that she was up against. It was the honour of my life to have been chosen by her to share Freddie’s true story.’
Ms Jones added that B had never wanted to go public with her identity because she was a doctor and risked ending her career and compromising her patients.
The family is now considering releasing some pictures of her, including of her with Freddie, as a young woman. They live in France.
It came five months after the woman, until today only known only as ‘B’ released an emotional statement ahead of publication of a book about their relationship.
She said: ‘I didn’t want to share my Dad with the whole world.’
She added: ‘After his death, I had to learn to live with the attacks against him, the misrepresentations of him, and with the feeling that my Dad now belonged to everyone.
‘I cried and mourned my Dad, while fans all around the world mourned Freddie. When you are 15 years old, it’s not easy.
‘I had to become an adult without him, and live all the structuring moments and events without his support.
‘For 30 years I had to build my life and family without him and accept that he wouldn’t be there to share the happy moments with us. For 30 years, while the rest of the world was reinterpreting Mercury’s life, his music and all that he had been, I needed to have my Dad just for me and my family. How could I have spoken before?’
B provided the statement after becoming aware that Mercury’s one-time lover and close friend Mary Austin said she did not know B existed.
