A friend of Freddie Mercury has shared the singer's heart-breaking words in the final months of his life.
Speaking in upcoming BBC Two documentary Freddie Mercury: The Final Act, Mercury's close friend Anita Dobson, wife of Queen's Brian May, says the band's frontman was preparing for death six months before he passed away in his West London home in 1991, at the age of 45.
She said: "I remember he said 'When I can't sing anymore darling, then I will die. I will drop dead'."
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The Queen frontman died due to complications from AIDS and his personal assistant Peter Freestone said the star refused to take drugs which were keeping him alive, the Mirror reports.
Peter explained: "The only thing he would take would be painkillers, he slowly let go.
"Joe called me at about 5.30am and Freddie had basically gone into a coma and we made Freddie sort of comfortable.
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"You could see Freddie had moved a bit and then as we were changing his T-shirt we just looked and saw his chest had stopped moving."
Peter said how the AIDS-related death of actor Rock Hudson in 1985 really affected Freddie.
He added: "It made Freddie face the fact that instead of us being immortal and it happening to somebody else, it was getting closer and closer to home.
"A few of Freddie's friends actually died. The closest was from New York, John Murphy."
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Freddie had been diagnosed with HIV in 1987.
Brian said: "The first time we really knew was when we got together in Montreux.
"Freddie just sat down and said 'OK, you guys probably know what is going on with me. You know what I am dealing with. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to take any action apart from carrying on the way we are. I want to carry on making music for as long as f***ing can. We will not dwell on it and we will go on'.
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"We all went 'OK' and that was it. There was a discussion about what we would say if we were questioned and we all agreed to deny it to protect Freddie.
"We felt quite comfortable about that. When we were in the studio and the studio doors were closed we had fun.
"For Queen as a family it was fantastic. We were never closer. But then Freddie was suffering."
Freddie's sister Kashmira Bulsara said: "Mum visited him more times than Dad. I don't think he could take it because he looked like a skeleton towards the end.
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"I remember Dad was reading one of the articles and tears were pouring down on to the newspaper and he said: 'This should have been me instead of Freddie'."
Freddie Mercury: The Final Act is set to be shown on on BBC2 later on this month and will be available on BBC iPlayer.
Featured Image Credit: AlamyTopics: Celebrity, Music, freddie mercury, Queen