“I was puzzled by Freddie at the beginning. I immediately said to Dave Croker, ‘Of course, he’s gay, isn’t he?’ ‘Oh, no, no, no, he lives with a girl, Mary Austin.’ Well, that’s not unusual but you know, he is gay!”

As individuals I was intrigued. John Deacon was kind of the quintessential bass player, mysterious. Roger was a great drummer and Brian was wearing clogs then and is still wearing them now and I was intrigued by their backgrounds, the fact they’d all been to university in diverse ways, so they were clearly intelligent. And I liked the melodies and I liked the songs. So I had a meeting with them altogether and we went through it and they were all feeling me out and I was feeling them out and then I took them out to dinner individually.

So we went to dinner in a restaurant in Fulham Road, just me and Freddie. We sat down and we were just talking. He was very funny, and he had a habit of touching his top lip and I said, ‘Maybe you should look at getting your teeth done,’ and he said, ‘I’ve had them fixed!” So we’re having dinner, and in the middle of the conversation I said, ‘Look, Freddie, there’s one thing I think you should know and I hope it doesn’t make any difference to you or the rest of the band; you do know that I’m gay?’ And he dropped his knife and fork and he said, ‘So am I, dear, we’ll get on swimmingly.’.”

Interview with John Reid, Queen manager 1975-1978 and Freddie’s close friend