Freddie Mercury: Mary Austin recalls Queen star's 'distressing' last days suffering fits

Freddie Mercury’s ex-girlfriend and long-time partner and confidante Mary Austin was with him during his last days spent at his Kensington mansion.

In an interview with OK! Magazine back in 2000, Austin recalled how the Queen icon had chosen when to stop his medication and let go.

“It was Freddie’s decision to finally end it all,” she said. “He chose the time to die.

“He knew it was coming. The quality of his life had changed so dramatically and he was in more pain every day.

But she struggled to come to terms with her grief and the magnitude of her new situation without him.

“Suddenly, there wasn’t anyone to help me,” she told the publication: “It made me realise that I wasn’t as self-sufficient as I would have liked to have been.

“He was always very protective of me. I only realised, after he died, quite how protective he’d been.

“If something happened, he’d say, ‘Oh darling, don’t worry – we’ll get over that,’” she recalled. “He was uplifting.

FREDDIE MERCURY: MARY AUSTIN ‘COULD NEVER LET QUEEN STAR GO UNLESS HE DIED’

“At other times, when he was aware he had AIDS and only had a limited time to live, there’d be the odd serious conversation when he’d say to me, ‘Let’s go and sit, we don’t know how long we have.’”

Austin admitted it took her five years to be able to bring herself to sleep in the master suite of what was now her house, the place where Mercury had spent his final days battling the illness.

“I’d spent so long with him being unwell and there were so many memories in that room,” she said. “Memories of him suffering.

“I just saw this very frail man lying in his bed and remembered all the little things that I used to do for him; combing his hair, because he’d lie back and all his hair would be sticking up.”

Queen star Mercury died on November 24, 1991, at age 45 due to complications from AIDS.