ELGIN housewife Laura Jackson is hoping for another best-seller with her ``warts-and-all'' biography of rock legend Freddie Mercury, out today.
In writing Mercury: The King Of Queen, said Mrs Jackson yesterday, she had access to much previously unpublished material on the life of the flamboyant Queen front man.
Some of Mercury's closest friends and colleagues, including Tim Rice, Richard Branson, and Sir Cliff Richard, talked publicly about the singer/composer for the first time, she said.
Published by Smith Gryphon of London at #16.99, Mercury: The King Of Queen appears five years after the death from Aids of the star who was born Farookh Bulsara in Zanzibar, East Africa, 50 years ago this year.
It goes into detail concerning Mercury's over-indulgence in drugs and gay sex, and tells of his selfish and sometimes violent behaviour during an 18-year career at the top.
Mrs Jackson said her book tells about the only two women in Mercury's adult life and sympathetically records, for the first time, his final days as he succumbed to Aids.
The Mercury story is the fourth major biography from the mother-of-one wife of a carpet-fitter who works from the back bedroom of her council house in Elgin, Moray.
Four years ago her first book, Golden Stone: The Untold Story And Mysterious Death Of Brian Jones, became a best-seller in Britain, America, and Japan.
The book earned Laura Jackson the respect of many in the rock music community, something that has since stood her in good stead.
Her second book, Queen and I: The Brian May Story, was described as ``the most definitive rock biography ever written'' in a BBC review, and was serialised in America.
Then she turned her attention to Daniel Day-Lewis, troubled son of poet laureate Cecil and star of The Last Of The Mohicans, My Left Foot, and In The Name Of The Father.
The result was Daniel Day-Lewis: The Biography, which topped the best-selling charts in Australia.
Mrs Jackson said: ``I have been working off and on since 1992 on the Freddie Mercury book, but I only completed the manuscript last January.
``I have not yet decided on the subject of my next book.''
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