MUSIC
Noddy Holder admits he told Freddie Mercury he was “never going to be a pop star”
Noddy Holder recently remembered a conversation with Queen frontman Freddie Mercury where he told the late singer that he didn’t believe he would become a pop star.
Making a rare television appearance, the rock icon shared a story of encountering Mercury before his rise to fame while he was working at a clothing stall in Kensington Market. During their brief interaction, Mercury expressed his aspirations of becoming a renowned music icon one day.
On Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, Holder also clarified the misconception surrounding his iconic mirror hat, refuting that he acquired it from Mercury. Instead, he revealed purchasing the eccentric fashion piece from a different nearby stall.
“I made the top hat with mirrors,” he explained, “I bought the hat in Kensington Market. You know, people think I bought it off Freddie Mercury. But I went to Kenny Market [to get it]. Freddie used to have a stall there, him and Roger from Queen selling shirts and paraphernalia.”
“I went down to Kenny Market because I used to buy shirts off him, and Freddie used to say to me, ‘Noddy darling I’m going to be a big pop star like you one day’. I said ‘Get off Freddie’, in more colourful language. ‘Go on Freddie. You’re never going to be a pop star’… He showed me, didn’t he?”
He continued: “Anyway two stalls down they used to sell old Victorian memorabilia and I bought the top hat there and stuck my own mirrors on and it became the famous icon of the glam rock era.”
Holder also recently told the BBC how he penned his iconic Christmas classic, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. He said: “I went to the local pub in Wolverhampton and went back to my mum and dad’s after and I sat up all night with a bottle of whisky and wrote the total lyrics that night.”
