Yahoo News Freddie Mercury's First London Home Honoured With Blue Plaque
Freddie Mercury’s former London home has been honoured with a Blue Plaque.
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The English Heritage sign was placed on the late Queen frontman’s first house in England in Feltham, west London, where his family lived after they moved to the UK from Zanzibar in 1964 when he was just 17.
Freddie’s sister Kashmira Cooke admitted he “secretly would have been very proud and pleased” to receive the honour.
She said: “Mum and I are so proud and pleased that English Heritage is honouring our Freddie with a Blue Plaque, and that he will be amongst other famous names for ever.
"Secretly he would have been very proud and pleased too.”
She also revealed the rock legend - who sadly passed away in 1991 aged 45 and would’ve turned 70 on Monday - spent the majority of his time in the abode “sketching for his college art work” and listening to Jimi Hendrix music.
Copyright [Nils Jorgensen/REX/Shutterstock]
Kashmira added: “He spent hours in the bathroom grooming his hair. At the time I wasn’t best pleased as there was only one bathroom.”
But the house wasn’t the be all and end all for Freddie’s parents Jer and Bomi Bulsara as it didn’t have central heating.
She said: “The house had no central heating… We were not familiar with coal fires and had to be shown how to light it.”
Freddie lived in the house when he met fellow Queen members Roger Taylor and Brian May, who was also at the unveiling.
Copyright [WENN\David Wainwright]
He said: “It is a pleasant duty to help install this little reminder on Freddie’s parents’ house in Feltham.
"It was here that I first visited Freddie soon after we had met through a mutual friend. We spent most of the day appreciating and analysing in intimate detail the way that Jimi Hendrix had put his recordings together in the studio - listening to Hendrix on vinyl played on Freddie’s Dansette record player - which had stereo speakers on opposite sides of the box!
"Feltham was the childhood neighbourhood for both of us but we never knew it until we met in the cause of music.”
