I Couldn't Bear to See Freddie Wasting Away
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8 interview times2 07.09.06 REX FEATURES “I was gobsmacked. You could feel the effect his stage presence had on the I couldn’t bear to see crowd,” says Hutton, who saw Mercury steal the show at Live Aid in 1985. Facing page: shots of the pair in Japan, 1986, Freddie wasting away and Hutton today would massage my feet and ask about my Then, during Christmas 1995, he was sit- This week, Freddie Mercury would have been day.” Hutton gave up his Savoy job and Mer- ting on his couch when he heard the tick- 60. His lover, Jim Hutton, was with him for cury employed him to garden and do odd jobs tock of the carriage clock Mercury had for £600 a month. “One day I was clearing given him. A friend had wound it up, but the final six years. Interview by TIM TEEMAN out the pond, I was in waders, and he said he Hutton took it “as a sign it was time to wanted a hug, and so we hugged, me dripping move on”. He started on a course of HIV muck all over the carpet.” drugs, and moved back to Ireland where he here’s an element of fairytale to Jim new, though not dazzling, to Hutton, who Mercury kept significant parts of his life — works as a carpenter and odd-job man with Hutton’s life, though he’d roar at had been brought up in a large Irish family in Hutton, Queen, his family — separate. Hut- one of his brothers. His health is good. the suggestion. A rough-hewn Irish- Co Carlow, the seventh of ten children. His ton says that they were both naturally pri- There have been flings, and one long-term T man, he is utterly direct, has a father was a baker. He studied to join an vate. “He might have worried about how relationship with a guy who couldn’t bear husky voice, drinks heartily and doesn’t take order of brothers but fell for one of his coming out would have affected him profes- to hear Mercury’s name mentioned, al- himself or the topography of his roller- teachers and become an apprentice hairdress- sionally but he didn’t say that. We both though Hutton reassured him that he coaster life — the ordinary guy who got his er instead. By the time he met Mercury he thought our relationship, and being gay, was wasn’t competing with a ghost. prince, then lost it all — that seriously. “I’m was working at the Savoy. our business.” Hutton has two dogs and five cats, and gasping for a cigarette,” he moans, as he Hutton moved in to Garden Lodge in early Mercury discovered he had Aids in 1987. He would like “a companion more than a recalls the night that he met Freddie Mer- 1986. Were they monogamous? Hutton had a Kaposi’s sarcoma lump on his shoul- lover”. His mother “pulled a fast one on cury in March 1985. “veered a little bit but not much, I’m a one- der. KS is such an advanced symptom of me” by dying in 1996, the week before he re- That evening the former hairdresser (he’s man man”, while a friend of Mercury’s told Aids — wasn’t there any preceding sign that turned to Ireland. He laughs, recalling her the least “gay” gay hairdresser you’re ever Hutton that the star had a boyfriend in Mu- likely to meet) was down to his last fiver. A nich. “She said that things weren’t going man sidled up to him at the bar in Heaven, well between them and Freddie was bring- ‘Deep down I think that ‘I remember his impish the London gay club, and asked him what ing me to Munich to make this other guy he wanted to be secure smile when you’d give him he would like to drink. “We were both wear- jealous. I didn’t say anything; it would have ing a tight white vest, ice-blue jeans,” Hut- given Freddie control. I saw him with an- with someone who was a gift,’ Hutton says. ‘He ton says. “I said, ‘No, what are you having to other guy in Heaven and we had a huge down to earth and not drink?’ And he said, ‘Large vodka’. Then he row. He told me he did it to make me jeal- would be as happy with 60 said, ‘How big is your cock?’ ” ous. Then one day I saw him leaving his Ken- impressed by who he was’ roses as 60 Picassos’ Mercury would often say that by way of an in- sington flat with another guy and we had an troduction. But the flamboyant showman was argument. I told him he had to make his he’d been infected with HIV? No, says Hut- reaction to the pressmen who banged on nothing like the private man who shared the mind up. And he said, ‘OK’, he wanted to be ton, nothing. “His attitude was ‘Life goes her door to tell her that her son was Fred- last six years of his life with Hutton. Had he with me. Deep down I think that he wanted on’. He took AZT and nearly every other die Mercury’s lover. “Yes, I know,” she not died of Aids in 1991, Mercury would have to be secure with someone who was down drug available. The doctors came to the replied impatiently. (When Hutton told her turned 60 on Tuesday but Hutton, 57, is to earth and not impressed by who he was.” house to treat him.” Hutton didn’t take a he was HIV positive, she said: “Ah, we having nothing to do with the many commem- Mercury’s hedonism has been overstated, test himself. “I was afraid.” An HIV test he thought you might be.”) orative celebrations. He is marking the occa- took in 1990 confirmed that he had the says Hutton. Sure, there were waiters at What would Mercury have been doing at sion at home in Ireland, recalling nights such Queen’s 21st birthday party with holes cut virus. He didn’t tell Mercury until he tested as Mercury’s 40th birthday at a club in Mu- positive again a year later. “All Freddie said 60? “Waiting for his pension book,” Hut- out of the backsides of their trousers, and, ton roars, though adds seriously that Mer- nich, when Hutton dressed up in a multicol- yes, Mercury did cocaine — but “recreation- was ‘Bastards’.” oured sequined jacket and the whole doolally cury would probably have gone on to writ- ally and not that much”. Their domestic rou- Hutton was healthy. Mercury was becom- ing scores for opera or ballet. Yes, he affair, drag queens and all, was captured for tine was settled. “He loved his cats. I’d get in ing more ill. “The doctors thought he shoul- the video of Living on My Own. “If he was thinks of Mercury, “but not all the time”. from work. We’d lie together on the sofa. He dn’t do the Barcelona video. But his attitude He turns up the radio full blast if a Queen here, I’d raise a cup of tea to him and say was ‘I’m not going to let this thing beat me’. <COLIN KEEGAN / COLLINS PHOTOS song comes on. Lately he’s become fixed ‘Happy birthday, lad’,” says Hutton. I noticed how skeletal he’d become only on on the track Innuendo. Had Mercury lived That first night, the two men and Mercury’s the morning of his last birthday. Maybe I he thinks that they would have still been to- friends stayed up all night at Mercury’s was in denial. But I think Freddie knew Kensington flat (he also had an eight-bed- when it was the time to let go. He decided to gether. He still wears the platinum signet roomed Georgian house, Garden Lodge, come off his Aids medication three weeks ring that Mercury gave him. (Mercury near by). It was only after he and Mercury before he died.” used to complain when Hutton took it off to garden.) had sex and Hutton had gone to the kitchen Mercury was nursed by Fanelli and Free- to make a cup of coffee that he was told who stone. “He wanted me to to do it but I Hutton once dreamt that they had bought a Mercury was. couldn’t bear to see him wasting away,” says cottage together; another time, in a semi- “Joe (Fanelli, Mercury’s cook) told me. I hon- Hutton. sleep, he felt he and Mercury were lying suspended in a tunnel of feathers. “Most of estly hadn’t recognised him. It didn’t matter “He once spoke about dying and I said, ‘I my treasured possessions are up here,” he to me. My preference was for meatier men. don’t want to hear that talk’. The last proper says, tapping at his head, and he still has the From the waist down Freddie was a swizzle- conversation we had took place a few days self. “He couldn’t have done. He wasn’t cap- “I went into my bedroom and stopped a car- was diagnosed he said to me, ‘I would under- framed four-leaf clover that he gave Mer- stick. But there was something about him. before he died. It was 6am. He wanted to He pursued me. One night I had made my able. His manager, Jim Beach, released it. I riage clock Freddie had given to me: the stand if you wanted to pack your bags and cury for his 40th.