Celebrity Shag No 1: Freddie Mercury (not)

I use the term loosely - very, very loosely, borrowing it from a lover manqué, Tanya Mitchell, years ago. She described an evening spent with Vic Reeves (aka Jim Moir), getting very pissed and looking forward to a Celebrity Shag, as she called it. (It didn't happen, or so she said, with a certain disappointment.)

I used to work in the Kensington Market in the very early 1970s, in the only print and poster stall, run by Big O Posters. It was on the ground floor, near where the stairs came down. Every now and then - well, with a calculated frequency, I suspect - there would be a clattering down the stairs, calling attention to itself, of course, and there would be a bloke dressed in a variety of body-hugging catsuits with the most dizzying pair of stacked heels on the end of his legs. Freddie Mercury. I was a pretty 17 year old and he never attempted to lay a hand - or anything else - on me. To this day, I consider I had a lucky escape.

But then, Freddie was so full of himself and his buck teeth, that I don't think he would have noticed anything else at all.


That's me and the lovely Chrissie Flynn and Jimmy Patatsou in 1971.


And another, with Ghost Boy in the foreground.