And now my mother and I have listened to the audiobook of his new autobiography, Keep Laughing, and we’ve really enjoyed it, so I wanted to do a review here as well. This isn’t sponsored or gifted, I’m just a fan, and I hope you find it interesting.
We got there in the end. To conclude my series of photos that I took at the Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own exhibition at Sotheby’s in 2023, we’re paying close attention to what the Queen frontman was best known for – his songwriting and performing.
There are some very significant items here, most of which are from the On Stage auction, but there are a few pieces from other auctions thrown in too. It all depends on how Sotheby’s had things on display in the galleries.
As has been the case in all the previous posts, clicking on the images will blow them up and the item links will take you to the description pages. So I hope you enjoy!
We’re now turning our attention to the On Stage auction, where items relating to Freddie’s songwriting and performing – some of which are very recognisable and important to big Queen fans like myself – sold for a total of £9,476,740! Most of the clothing shown here is from that auction but, as with previous posts, there are a few pieces from other auctions mixed in as well.
As ever, you can click on the images to enlarge them and the item names to read more, and I hope you enjoy seeing the wide selection I’ve included here.
This time I’m going to show you a wide selection of mostly smaller items that were sold in the first and second Crazy auctions, and occasionally some of the other auctions, from jewellery to various random objects.
As always, to enlarge the images you can click on them, and to read more about each item you can click on its name. Enjoy!
Freddie Mercury was an avid collector of objects, who had a real eye for beauty, loved all things feline and had a great sense of humour. And that’s clearly in evidence here, as we continue looking back at my photos from the 2023 A World Of His Own exhibition that took place at Sotheby’s.
This time we’re looking at items to do with cats, clothing, books and music that he collected. Most of them are from the auctions Crazy Little Things 1 and Crazy Little Things 2, which raised £10.3 million altogether! But there are a few bits and pieces from other auctions mixed in too, just as there were some items from the Crazy auctions in my previous posts.
So there’s plenty to look through, and as before you can click on the images to enlarge them and the item names to learn more. Hope you enjoy as always!
For this post we’re going to look at a whole bunch of awards, because Freddie and Queen were honoured with a deluge of well-earned accolades during and after his lifetime, so there were lots on display in the exhibition. I’m not going to list them all, obviously, but I’m going to present a big selection that I took photos of, to give you a thorough sense of what was there. Most were sold in the Crazy Little Things 2 auction while a few were in the On Stage sale.
The vast majority of the sales awards adorned the walls of a room featuring Freddie’s royal cloak and crown (which you’ll see in a later post in this series). There were a huge number of silver, gold and platinum awards there, for the sales of singles and albums, and occasional awards for videos. But there were also some awards scattered around elsewhere too. A lot of the awards for disc sales look very similar by their nature, but there are a few more striking ones in amongst them.
So let’s crack on with it. As before you can click on the images to enlarge them and the award names to find out more, and I hope you enjoy!
Freddie Mercury didn’t just love the art of music, he was also a keen fan of paintings and prints. For example, in the first part of this series looking through the photos I took at the 2023 A World Of His Own exhibition at Sotheby’s, we saw some of the Japanese imagery that he had in his collection.
So now it’s time to dig deeper and see more of the art that he owned and had on display at Garden Lodge, his residence from which I recently shared many images of his furniture here and here. Most of these pieces were therefore sold in the At Home auction, but there are some from the Evening Sale and Crazy Little Things auctions too.
Towards the end of this post you’ll also see the famous door to the house, which itself is a work of art due to the fan tributes that completely cover it. And on a related note I’ll also show you my own visit to the property – not that you can see anything from the outside, but it still feels nice to say I’ve been there.
So with a reminder that you can click the names of the artworks to read more about them and the images to enlarge them, I hope you enjoy looking through it all!
Back in October 2000, a depressed and almost divorced Liverpudlian called John Bishop naively put his name down for an open mic spot, despite having no experience of stand-up whatsoever, purely to avoid paying £4 to enter the Frog & Bucket comedy club in Manchester.
He didn’t expect to be invited on stage, but he was, and his off-the-cuff debut monologue that night triggered a chain of events that saved his marriage to Melanie and launched his stand-up career. It’s a really sweet story – one that’s actually inspired the new film called Is This Thing On?, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Will Arnett. It seems to be getting good reviews too, so I will watch it and give my reaction to it at some stage, if not in the cinema then after it becomes available online.
25 years on from that first appearance, having since become one of the most successful comedians of the 21st century, John has been celebrating the milestone with a new tour, from which one of the performances was broadcast on Sky in December. He’s also posted a few shows from the past couple of years and a video diary from his new tour over on Youtube.
I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, having bought all of his stand-up DVDs that were released between 2010-2018. I just think he’s a very funny observational story-teller and a really nice, down to earth guy, and I like how he does something a little bit special or different at the end of some of his shows, rather than just finishing with a joke. In the past I’ve seen a few TV programmes that he’s been in as well, including his self-titled shows, but most notable for me was his stint as companion Dan Lewis in Jodie Whittaker’s era of Doctor Who, and last year’s cameo in the ITV drama Code Of Silence alongside Rose Ayling-Ellis.
So now’s the perfect time for me to mark his anniversary by having a Bishop binge on his stand-up material, revisiting his DVDs that I haven’t watched for a while and then checking out his newer material that I haven’t seen at all before. And I’ve also compiled a playlist with a selection of clips and interviews. So I hope you enjoy!
But there were so many things to see on that theme alone that I had to split them up. So here’s another batch of beautiful and interesting items, where you can click on the names to read more about them and on the photos to zoom in. Enjoy!
Welcome to the third part of my look back at the exhibition Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own, which took place at Sotheby’s in London in August 2023, prior to the big auction in September that year. Last week I gave an introduction to the auctions and looked at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion and other items from that country, and now for this post we’re going to start looking around his famous home in London.
Garden Lodge was the 7-bedroom house in Kensington where Freddie resided during the 1980s until his death in 1991. He really made it his own, purposefully decorating and furnishing each room in its own unique style. Reading about it in the accompanying book, with the photos used to illustrate it, emphasises how utterly exquisite it was.
Back in 1980 he bought it for £500,000 in cash (over £2 million in today’s money), as he was keen to snap it up after his first visit. But when it went back on the market in February 2024, estate agent Knight Frank was seeking offers of over £30 million! It’s not clear if it’s been sold or for how much since then.
The At Home auction didn’t fetch quite that much, but the huge myriad of items, which had to be spread across multiple gallery rooms in Sotheby’s, altogether fetched a massive £5,314,823!
So I’m going to share a wide selection of furniture and accessories from Garden Lodge that I saw in the galleries, which I’m spreading over 2 posts as there’s so much of it. Most of these items are from the At Home auction, but there are a few from the other auctions mixed in.
As before, you can click on the images to enlarge them and the item names to see the Sotheby’s descriptions. I hope you enjoy!
Well Eye Never 
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