Freddie Mercury told the world who he was on stage—but in these pages, he tells us what he never said off it. Freddie: I Am the Show is an intimate, unapologetic first-person biography written as if Freddie himself could narrate the story of his life—with the clarity, candor, and cultural insight he rarely shared publicly.

I remember once, in the early '80s, I was in New York, raiding some private collection at Sotheby’s, pretending I knew more about Indian antiquities than I did. One piece caught my eye—a Mughal miniature painting. Bright, absurdly detailed. A courtesan in a garden, surrounded by musicians. She looked smug. I liked that. I bought it without blinking.

The auctioneer asked me, “Are you interested in Indian art?” I smiled. “Darling, I am Indian art.” He didn’t laugh. That was the other thing. People rarely knew when I was joking and when I wasn’t.

The truth is, I surrounded myself with pieces of the old world, but always privately. I had Parsi silver on my dining table. I had carved wooden boxes from Gujarat in my sitting room. I even kept a tiny brass diya in a drawer, unlit, but there. A relic from my mother’s kitchen altar, wrapped in tissue like it might bite. I never explained these things. They just were.

There were times, rare and unannounced, when I’d retreat into myself and remember Bombay. Not the literal streets—I’d only lived there a few years—but the texture. The sounds, the colours. How people shouted like opera singers at each other over fruit prices. How everything smelled of sugar, sweat, and engine oil. How the film posters were hand-painted and always ten times bigger than life. That was the first theatre I ever saw.

I kept a cassette of old Hindi music in the back of a drawer in Garden Lodge. I never played it when anyone else was around. It felt too personal, too delicate. There was one track—just a live recording of Rafi in concert—that hit something in me I couldn’t name. You could hear the audience weeping. Not screaming. Weeping. That was the power I always chased onstage. Not just noise. Reverence.