Freddie, a very private rock star

Last Tuesday Freddie Mercury would have turned 60, had he not died in November 1991 of bronchial pneumonia resulting from Aids. We can only speculate on how Mercury would have celebrated such an auspicious occasion in a rock star's life. Would he have thrown one of his infamous parties featuring (or so legend has it) leather-clad dwarfs serving trays of cocaine, or opted for tea and scones with his nearest and dearest?

It's hard to say. In our confessional age, where pop stars are happy to share their secrets and flaunt their emotional scars, Mercury was something we no longer have: a very private pop star. During his life he gave few interviews and, when he did, he refused to talk about his background, being gay or having Aids.

So while Mercury the performer is one of the most flamboyant exhibitionists in the history of pop, Freddie the man remains an enigma. But this Tuesday sees the airing of a television documentary that may help us finally to figure him out. ITV's Freddie Mercury: A Kind of Magic features his mother Jer Bulsara and sister Kashmira Cooke, and claims to be the most candid and comprehensive look at Mercury's private life yet.

Queen have sold about 150m records since their first hit - Seven Seas of Rye - in 1974 and are frequently found at the top of polls of people's favourite bands, albums and live performances. In 2002 Mercury secured a place (No 58) in the list of The 100 Greatest Britons and the new documentary features young stars who cite him as a hero and inspiration.

Yet looking at this new portrait of Mercury some of us will wonder how this narcissistic, self-pitying, selfish and snobbish phoney has remained such a figure of worldwide veneration.

Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara on the African island of Zanzibar, then a British colony. His father was a minor official working at the British Colonial Office. At the age of seven he was sent to St Peter's, a boarding school in India, where the family had lived for generations. It was in 1964 when he was 17 that his family fled Zanzibar for Britain.

As A Kind of Magic shows, Mercury refused to talk about his Asian background. Indeed, many Queen fans - then and now - think their idol was Persian because he tended to play up the family's Persian roots.

He wanted to pass as a white European rock'n'roll star. Curiously, people are horrified that Michael Jackson should be in such denial of his ethnic origins and yet don't mind Mercury doing the same thing.

A whole gaggle of friends in the film line up to tell us what a shy and sensitive person Mercury was. This is curious because there is plenty of video footage of him off-stage and judging by the way he is hugging and dancing with various men in gay clubs, he doesn't look like your average shrinking violet. In truth, Mercury was a party animal who revelled in excess. In the film we hear him boast, "I've had more lovers than Liz Taylor."

In the early 1980s Mercury moved to New York and became a regular visitor to the new wave of gay sex clubs where it was not uncommon for the clientele to have sex with dozens of strangers. I think we can safely infer that he did not go to these establishments for the quality of conversation. What was such a shy chap as Mercury doing cruising these human meat markets? A Kind of Magic wants to show Mercury as a shy and sensitive soul because it makes him seem much more human. But he had no interest in ordinary people, their lives or their problems. He was interested in one thing only: being a star. Mercury was a curious mix of modern rock raunch and old Hollywood fame and glamour: Elvis meets Judy Garland.

He loved to shock. In Queen's I Want to Break Free video, he got up in full drag and paraded around like a housewife doing the housework. He would employ all sorts of gender-bending tactics to shock people except one: the truth.

The greatest mystery about him is why he refused to admit to the public that he was gay or that he had Aids. Much is made of the fact that Mercury had grown up in a very religious home and did not want to upset his mother and father who were Zoroastrians - a religion that forbids homosexuality. But, as his sister points out, the family already knew he was gay.

Some say the record company pressurised Mercury not to "come out" because it would damage sales. But Queen appeared in the 1970s, the heyday of glam rock when men like Marc Bolan and David Bowie were piling on the mascara and glitter and androgyny was all the rage. His sister thinks he was silent because "he was a bit ashamed of being gay".

Mercury even refused to do his bit to alert people to the dangers of Aids or try to diffuse the stigma associated with it. When in 1987 he was first diagnosed he flatly denied that he had it - and only came out and tried to raise public awareness about the issue the day before he died.

So in a strange way the truth has finally come out about Freddie Mercury - he was a self-loathing gay man who never stood up for anything in his life except himself and his bank account.