Mercury and Me. Jim Hutton with Tim Wapshott

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Mercury and Me. Jim Hutton with Tim Wapshott

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Foreword

1 Freddie Who?

2 Make Your Mind Up

3 A Rare Deceit

4 A Yen to Shop

5 You’re Fired

6 Overtures and Beginners

7 Duckingham Palace

8 The Retreat

9 Pruning Pals

10 Letting Go

11 No Escape from Reality

12 Living on My Own

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people I would like to thank for helping me get this project off the ground. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dominic Denny for all his endeavours on my behalf. Without him there would be no book.

Next, I should like to thank Tim Wapshott for helping me channel my thoughts. I should also like to thank my literary agent Giles Gordon at Sheil Land Associates.

There are so many I feel I would like to acknowledge for supporting me and my book but, before doing so, first may I apologise to anyone I omit by accident. So, my heartfelt thanks to the following: John Alexander, Dr Gordon Atkinson, Liz Bennett, Bloomsbury Publishing plc, John Deacon, Joe Fennelli, Leslie Freestone, Peter Freestone, Terry Giddings, Julian Hedley, Robert Kirby, Sonia Land, Debbie Leng, Philip Loveday, Brian May, Billy Mullen, John Rowell, Dominique Taylor, Roger Taylor, Nicholas Wapshott, Misa Watanabe and, last but by no means least, Jacky Gunn and all the members of the Queen Fan Club.

Finally, most of the photographs which appear in this book are from my own collection. However, I would like to thank Richard Young and Misa Watanabe for additional pictures.

Jim Hutton

London W12

August 1994

INTRODUCTION

Jim Hutton was the man Freddie Mercury called ‘my husband’ back in the Eighties, long before such things were conceivable let alone actually, and rightly, possible. Had he lived, Freddie Mercury would have been 67 this year. And his long-standing lover Jim Hutton would have been 64. The lives of both men were tragically cut short through ill health.

Jim, who believed it was Freddie who had infected him with HIV, actually went on to outlive Freddie by 18 years. But Jim was a heavy smoker, which cannot have helped matters, and he finally succumbed to debilitating lung cancer on January 1, 2010, just three days shy of what would have been his 61^st birthday.

Jim Hutton seemed to be the unlikeliest of partners for the world’s most extrovert rock superstar. In many ways he was the complete opposite of his showman lover. For an Irishman, Jim seemed especially quiet and reserved, and he could be painfully shy in company. The relationship that blossomed between them was equally improbable – how could a modest gentleman’s barber satisfy the planet’s most eccentric rock performer? And yet, Jim not only could but he did.

In 1993 and 1994 I helped Jim to write this memoir of his remarkable life with Freddie. Jim did not sell-out. He did not feel he had in him a great showbusiness kiss-and-tell to luridly tout around the book publishers. His reason for wanting to write ‘Mercury and Me’ seemed to be that he knew it would be hugely cathartic, a way to exercise his enduring grief. He saw it as his chance to finally come to terms with his loss and all that he had been through leading up to - and after - Freddie’s premature death.

I liked Jim Hutton very much. He might not have been a natural in the glittery world of celebrity, but he remained true to himself and fiercely independent. Unsurprisingly, after almost a decade around Freddie, some of the singer’s sparkle had rubbed off and he tried his best to bounce back in good humour.

Just as it had been at Garden Lodge in Kensington where he had lived with Freddie, when Jim first settled in west London after Freddie’s death his pride and joy was the garden. His small suburban garden at Ravenscourt Park may have been infinitely smaller than the grounds at Garden Lodge, but they were just as impeccably tended. Jim had, as they say, the touch.

Jim had told me when we worked together on the book that while he had lived with Freddie he had often endured snide comments from one or two of those around the singer. Such shabby behaviour was apparently amplified in the weeks that followed Freddie’s death – one even cruelly claiming that Jim had never even been Freddie’s lover. It was repugnant treatment of someone who at the time was very clearly in mourning.

Some, it seemed, struggled to hide their envy that Jim had enjoyed a unique, loving and enduring special friendship with Freddie, while for all their efforts they had remained mere colleagues, acquaintances or employees. Jim added that later some apologised for their abhorrent behaviour. It said so much of Jim that he had instantly forgiven them their painful transgressions as he tried to move on with his life.

For all the comings and goings at Garden Lodge over the years, no one intimately shared Freddie’s life more than Jim Hutton. Mercury had resolutely maintained a generous open-door policy with his friends and family at Garden Lodge. Under his tenure, it was a home of warmth and love. But a series of events in quick succession dealt Jim blow after blow.

Eventually Jim found that living in London without Freddie was too much to bear and by the end of the Nineties he had quietly slipped back to Ireland. His home there was the one place – perhaps the last place – Jim Hutton could really find lasting solace with his memories of the enigmatic Freddie.

I would speak on the phone to Jim from time to time once he had permanently moved back to Carlow. He had definitely found a form of contentment and peace there that was so obviously missing all the time that he had remained in London. Being surrounded by his large family (he had nine siblings! ) became very important to him. It was hugely comforting, he told me. His love for Freddie clearly never diminished but I think by then he needed the reassurance of unconditional love that one’s blood relatives usually offer best.

Once he was back in Ireland, his bungalow also became a safe haven for assorted cats and dogs. It was typical that in addition to his own cats he had affectionately befriended the local strays. His garden in Ireland, too, was well tended and, a final reminder of Garden Lodge, he added a small Japanese-style koi pool.

Jim was never very good with money and he was generous to a fault. It is no surprise that what was left of his nest-egg from Freddie soon dried up. To help balance the books he helped some of his brothers, who were builders, on the odd project. He also undertook some part-time gardening work for neighbours and friends.

Following several months of ill-health in the latter part of 2009, Jim died at home surrounded by his family on January 1, 2010. The funeral was held at a small church in Bennekerry, just outside Carlow. Jim had spent much of his childhood in Bennekerry and by all accounts it was a very happy one. It was as good a place as any to say farewell to him some 60 years on.

It seems right to now release ‘Mercury and Me’ on Kindle so that it might perhaps reach a new, if modest, audience. This is an honest and open memoir and it remains a poignant tale of gay love in the Eighties when the AIDS epidemic and backlash in Britain were both at their height. The e-book is published on Sunday November 24 – 22 years to the day that the music died when we lost Freddie Mercury.

We are marking the e-publication with a small launch party at London’s Club at The Ivy, where we hope to raise a little money for Stonewall along the way. Several of those who knew and loved Freddie and Jim will be there and we will all be raising a glass to rock’s oddest couple. They both remain sorely missed.

Tim Wapshott

London, November 2013

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