Category: Entertainment

Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 3 – Garden Lodge Furniture

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.

Double-page spread, from the book accompanying the Freddie Mercury exhibition at Sotheby's. This section of the book is entitled Behind The Green Door, with text about Freddie's life at Garden Lodge on one page, and a picture of the garden on the other page.

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.

A white board on the Freddie Mercury timeline in Sotheby's. Alongside a picture of the wooden front door of Garden Lodge, with bushes each side of the narrow pathway, is text that reads 1980 - Garden Lodge. In 1980, Freddie took possession of Garden Lodge, a Neo-Georgian, eight-bedroom townhouse in London's Kensington district. Freddie's beloved sanctuary was surrounded by an eight-foot high wall, accessed through a distinctive green door.

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!

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Christmas 2025 Favourites – Part 2

Happy New Year! I hope you’ve had a wonderful time this festive season. Or if it’s been a difficult period, or even a tough year overall, then I hope 2026 works out better for you.

My mother and I are certainly hoping it will be more positive after everything we’ve been through in the last 12 months. I’ve written a lot about being a carer for her, and recently brought our story up to date by reflecting on the year and the considerable progress we’ve made. We did have a lovely, relaxing, over-indulgent Christmas, I’m pleased to say, so that’s put us in the right frame of mind for the year ahead. The future of my job is very uncertain, granted, but whatever happens with that I’ll be alright. So fingers crossed things continue to go well for us.

I previously posted about the things I enjoyed during the advent period leading up to Christmas, so now it’s time to catch up with all the other entertainment that’s been keeping me occupied since then. So let’s jump straight into it, and I hope you enjoy!

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 2 – Other Japanese Items

Yesterday I began sharing photos from my visit to the Sotheby’s exhibition Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own back in 2023, which was a wonderful experience and a great privilege. It’s taken all this time to go through my pictures, figure out what most of the items are and what they sold for, and then organise it all here, but I managed it in the end and I’m excited to share it with you. You can click on the photos to enlarge them, and on the item names to see their full descriptions on the Sotheby’s website.

In the first part we looked at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion, so now I’m going to share a myriad of other items from that fine country that he owned and treasured, including vases, tea sets, ewers, incense burners, presentation boxes, books, dolls and more.

Most of the items were sold in the auction In Love With Japan, but some were included in the other auctions as well. In any case, they further demonstrate just how deep Freddie’s fascination went. And you can’t blame him. So I hope you enjoy this wide selection.

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Freddie Mercury’s World – Part 1 – Japanese Art & Fashion

Over two years ago, back in September 2023, Sotheby’s auctioned off nearly 35,000 items (in roughly 1,500 lots) that once belonged to the legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, from his home at Garden Lodge in Kensington. The event was called Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own, and included everything from fashion to furniture, artworks to awards, ornaments to instruments, printed books to handwritten lyrics, and much more, proving that he was quite the avid collector to say the least! There were 6 auctions spread over a week, with the total sales coming to a whopping £39,936,046!

Before the big sell-off, however, Sotheby’s put most of the items on public display for a month, and I was one of the lucky 140,000 fans who went along to check it out. I certainly couldn’t afford to bid on the auctions, so this was as close as I could ever possibly get to it all. And it was an absolutely incredible privilege – a kind of magic if you will – as Freddie had such exquisite taste and attention to detail.

I came away with some lovely souvenirs as well, including a massive album of photos that I took, a large tote bag that I bought in the shop and have made good use of since, and the beautiful limited edition hardback book I ordered.

At the time I briefly mentioned the exhibition in my 40th birthday roundup, as going to see it was one of my big treats for myself. But it was always my desire to go through the photos in my collection properly, by finding details about the items and how much they sold for, using the Sotheby’s website and the accompanying book, before sharing as much of it here on my blog as I could. So I’ve been working on it bit by bit when time allows, and I finally finished going through it all this Christmas. It’s been a truly fascinating project for me.

So to mark the 50th anniversary of Bohemian Rhapsody in late 2025, and the 10th anniversary of my blog in early 2026, it gives me great pleasure to present hundreds of my photos of items in the exhibition – each of which you can click on to enlarge – along with links to all the details on the Sotheby’s website. You can see even more items on their site that I haven’t included of course, and it’s easy to create a free account if you want to see the final sale prices.

Neither Sotheby’s nor Queen, nor anyone else connected with the auctions or Freddie, have been involved with this, I’m just a big fan. While I could have just picked a few favourite items, I wanted to do the exhibition and Freddie justice, especially as many of these pieces may never be seen in public again.

The exhibition was split into 4 main sections – Japan, Home, Crazy Little Things and On Stage – and there were 6 auctions along the same lines (plus a second Crazy auction and an Evening Sale for the most significant items). So my posts will generally reflect that as well. Within each section of the exhibition, most items were from the auction of the same name, but there were often items from the Evening Sale or the other auctions mixed in as well, because they fitted the theme.

So here’s the first part of my extensive look back at the exhibition, with an overview of what it was like to visit, and then a closer look at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion. I hope you enjoy!

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Christmas 2025 Favourites – Part 1

It’s been a long year for my mother and I, so we’re glad that Christmas has finally come around, and thankfully the preparations have been going well, just as I hope they have been for you. Granted, there is the potential loss of my job next year hanging over my head, through no fault of my own, but that won’t affect me as severely as the friend I provide support for. And given everything that’s already gone on at home during 2025, my mother and I just want to relax, forget about our problems and over-indulge to celebrate Christmas, as you’re supposed to do. And we’ve got everything we need for that.

So I’ve actually been able to go out and about in London a few times this month, now that Mum’s more comfortable being on her own in the house again, having got some of her independence and confidence back. Sometimes it’s just been for walks, but I’ve also met up with a friend as well.

And then at home I’ve been enjoying a lot of entertainment, including dramas, comedies and music. Some things are still ongoing or are on my to do list, so I won’t mention them just yet, but there are already plenty of bits and pieces I can talk about already. So with the usual disclaimer that none of this is sponsored or gifted, I hope you enjoy this varied selection.

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Micky Flanagan – Stand-Up DVD Reviews

Comedian Micky Flanagan is a proper Cockney geezer from London, having grown up in the East End of the city not too far from where I live now. So I feel some affinity with him, and I do enjoy his humour. Not to the same level as some of my absolute favourite comedians, I wouldn’t put him in my top 10. But he is funny, and having bought his new DVD that came out recently, I figured it was a good excuse to rewatch his earlier shows that I have in my collection as well, just like I’ve done with some other comedians previously.

The shows in this post have all been repeated on Sky during December (as the latest release was first broadcast last year, though I didn’t get around to seeing it at the time), and the first two are also on Netflix. But I like to have my own copies of shows on DVD, as it’s much more convenient than relying on TV schedules and streaming services, and there are a small selection of extras on Micky’s first few DVDs.

So with a warning that the videos in this post contain strong language and adult humour, I hope you enjoy this little set of reviews.

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October & November 2025 Favourites

Hello again, I hope you’re doing alright and are looking forward to Christmas.

During the last couple of months, my mother has been recovering well from her fractured wrist, both physically and mentally, thanks to all the support she’s received from the NHS and social services. There still are, and always will be, times when she gets anxious or finds things difficult of course. But having melatonin to help her sleep at night, and a wheelchair to help her get out and about more, has given her a real boost, along with various other forms of help she’s had. And at the very end of November I was even able to go out for a long walk and explore the shops by myself like I used to do, because she felt able to cope on her own.

You can find out more about all of that in my journal posts as usual, including some recovery of my own after I had a wisdom tooth extracted. You can also hear an interview I recorded in October for RNIB Connect Radio about my caring role, which was featured in their Good Company show and then released independently as a podcast.

All that aside, I’ve naturally been enjoying plenty of entertainment as well including Doctor Who, comedies, podcasts and audiobooks. So that’s what I’m going to focus on here, and I hope you enjoy this latest roundup!

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Doctor Who Review – Series 6

Recently I began revisiting Matt Smith’s reign on Doctor Who, by taking a deep dive into Series 5 as part of my ongoing posts about the modern era of the show.

So now it’s time to move on to Series 6. With the previous series, new showrunner Steven Moffat had given the programme a big overhaul, and very successfully too. So this time around things are more settled. The 11th Doctor is again joined by the gorgeous Karen Gillan playing the feisty Amy Pond, along with Arthur Darvill in the role of her newly wedded husband Rory Williams. They make such an enjoyable trio with great chemistry between them, because they became such good friends off-camera when they started working on Series 5 together. You can see how much fun they have together in the Confidential documentaries as well.

We also see plenty more of Alex Kingston as River Song, and we finally discover who she really is. Her identity is revealed as a mid-season cliffhanger, as originally the series was split into two halves, with a 12-week gap between them. Such a break had never happened in the modern era before, so it was a bit frustrating at the time, especially given the big reveal. But at least the series can be watched all in one go now. Other mysteries from the previous series, about The Silence and the exploding Tardis, also continue to develop here, along with new story arcs about the Doctor’s death and Amy’s pregnancy.

So there’s plenty to get through in this post, in terms of the episodes and the various extra features as per usual, and once again I’ve compiled a playlist for the series with lots of clips and bonus material. I hope you enjoy!

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Top Of The Bucket List – Farewell Patricia Routledge

On Friday we sadly lost Patricia Routledge at the age of 96. She loved her acting career and charity work, focusing on it throughout her life, not even getting married or having children. She was happy as she was, and exceptionally good at what she did in her many roles on stage and screen, including the title character in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and her recitals of monologues by Alan Bennett.

But she will forever be remembered most fondly for playing the snobbish, candlelight supper-serving, ‘Lady of the House’ Hyacinth Bucket – pronounced ‘bouquet’ – in the wonderful sitcom Keeping Up Appearances during the 90s, written by Roy Clarke. Patricia was perfectly cast and in 1996, the year after it ended, she was voted the UK’s most popular actress at an awards ceremony for the BBC’s 60th anniversary. By that point she had already been honoured with an OBE 3 years earlier, she was granted a CBE in 2004, and ultimately became a Dame in the 2017 New Year Honours list, for her services to theatre and charity work.

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September 2025 Favourites

Welcome to my latest monthly roundup, I hope you’re doing well.

In terms of my caring responsibilities towards my mother, who is still recovering from her broken wrist, I’ve continued posting separate journal updates about everything that’s been going on, split into Part 1 and Part 2 for this month. So do read those posts if you want to be kept informed about that side of my life. Suffice to say that while we are still finding things difficult in some ways, she is continuing to get various forms of help, and we are now starting to consider the support required for her longer term care needs. Plus we’ve already had a very positive development at the start of October, perhaps the most significant to date, that has the potential to make a huge difference long-term. I’ll tell you about that in my October journal posts in the weeks ahead, and it’s going to be an important transitional month if all goes to plan.

Apart from all that though, I have kept myself entertained in various ways as well, with music, TV shows and an audiobook. So here are the main things I’ve been enjoying, and I hope you find them interesting to read about as always.

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