Freddie punched at The Marquee Club?? True or BS...

Andrew Matheson, the former singer (term used loosely) of The Hollywood Brats states the following on his facebook page:
' ......We played the Marquee with this line up. It was excruciatingly awful.
We got fed up with the name ‘The Queen’ rather quickly but we kept it a further month or two purely because we found out from our manager (Chris Andrews of “Yesterday Man” fame) that it was annoying four ponces who had just recently signed to EMI.
One night me and Cas were leaning on the bar at the Marquee, drowning sorrows by drinking doubles and sneering at the band on stage when up walks an obvious foreigner with hair like black straw and teeth like a sexy camel. He started yapping a mile a minute, waving his arms, exhorting us to relinquish the name Queen.
Two minutes later I’d had all I could take and since I didn’t want Cas throwing a punch (the Norwegian was notorious for letting fly with the fists in those days but we needed those fingers for keyboards) my knuckles were designated to meet Farrokh Bulsara’s lethally protuberant gnashers at high velocity and full clench. Kapow!
Freddie Mercury went down like a sack of spuds, rolling around on the floor, dripping pre-Aids claret and squealing like a stuck pig. Meanwhile I was holding my hand and trying not to say “Yeeeowchh!”
I’ve still got a wee scar on my right hand.'

Can anyone confirm this story? Matheson's band was called 'The Queen' before changing to Hollywood Brats, there is no listing for The Queen on the Marquee site gig lists.
Cheers, Jeff

"dripping pre-AIDS claret and squealing like a stuck pig."

What a fucking moron that guy is....

I´ve never heard this before, but just the way this guy writes about Freddie and Queen doesn´t deserve any credit or any attention from me.

But thanks to the original poster from bringing this up.

He doesn't say he is playing there, just hanging out.

But yes, bit of a badly told tale for a number of reasons.

First sentence "we played the Marquee with this line-up"

Bollocks.

What a nasty fucker you are matey with your lies.
believe me if you got into a fight with freddie you would have been the one on the floor in a heap.
Firstly Queen never ever called themselves "The Queen"
because that just would be silly.
Secondly you are just after your 15 minutes of fame
which is false 100%.
Dont forget Freddie could have a nasty temper,
as Manager John Reid recalls when Freddie haulled
a brick through his window in the 70s !

"The Queen" is a former name of "The Hollywood Brats", some two-bit punk/glam group with what appears to be a rather aggressive line-up. Really, you do need to read more carefully.

As for nasty tempers...Charles Mingus once pinned a polite note to his managers chair, informing him that he hadn't been paid for his previous album yet. He just happened to pin it to the manager's chair with a ten-inch knife.

"if you got into a fight with freddie you would have been the one on the floor in a heap. "

I somehow doubt that, the only problem with a 'punching Freddie' story is that if you tried it those teeth would slice your hand off....

Thanks to one and all for the replies, just to add a bit more, here are 2 versions of the story from the keyboard player Stein Groven aka CASINO STEEL (Norwegian). These are from 2 seperate interviews and differ somewhat to the ramblings of Matheson:
1) Interviewer: Then with Andrew Matheson and Lou Sparks you formed The Queen in 1971?
Casino Steel: Yes that’s right and we used to play the Café Des Artistes in Fulham Road; we were the regular band on there and then "the" band Queen appeared. I can’t remember what they were originally called but they’d changed their name to Queen. We had a gig at the Marquee under the name of The Queen and Freddie Mercury came up to me and he hit me. He said that we would have to change our name and I said, "Fuck you" but then they had a hit so we had to change our name. They were also regulars at the Café Des Artistes but they were doing cover versions at the time, "Route 66" and all that sort of stuff.
2) Interviewer: Can you tell us what happened on that night at the Marquee when you decided to change your name to The Hollywood Brats?
Cas: We had gigs at the Café des Artistes, The Marquee, The Speakeasy and Samanthas as “The Queen”. Then Freddy Mercury and Queen had a “hit”. He turned up at the Marquee with demands that we change our name. I told Freddy to go to hell, then Andrew threw him out of the dressing room. We had already thought of changing our name to The Hollywood Brats, which we thought was a much better name, so there wasn’t a problem.
Note that Steel confirms that "The Queen" was formed in 1971, whereas Matheson in his blog on facebook states October 1972! No mention of Freddie being punched. Matheson's page can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Andrew-Matheson/111774758996182?fref=ts

I have to admit that I have never heard this story before and there are a lot of flaws to the tale, I don't think that anyone could have gotten that close to Freddie to punch him anyway, and I don't think Freddie would have squealed like a pig in the first place.
Freddie and his band members were some pretty tough people and Brian would have gotten in the way in protection of Freddie and so would John, So I think this story is completely a large falsehood and comes from some person over active imagination.

Thanks

There's always a good chance that Freddie could have been punched due to his regal attitude and overt campness (don't forget this was a very homophobic time).

I very much doubt that Fred would have physically fought back. His weapon was his mouth.

All this 'Fred would have sorted him out' nonsense is based on nothing more than the tale of when he was supposed to have faced down Sid Vicious.

A single occasion probably blown out of all proportion and fuelled by a few too many vodka and tonics.

Freddie was not a fighter, despite what a few rabidly heterosexual people would try to mould him into.

doh

Photo of Freddie boxing at St Peter's school in Panchgani India

http://www.queenzone.com/pictures/freddie-mercury/5643/freddie-boxing-at-school.aspx

From Freddie Mercury The Biography by Laura Jackson

http://books.google.com/books?id=7uCPAit0AtUC&pg=PT8&lpg=PT8&dq=freddie+mercury+boxing&source=bl&ots=oIg_2mxM-v&sig=AwHR5rXS4oFBHg878pJBs0bPLsU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PRuMUr-TG4Wu4AO54IC4Dw&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=freddie%20mercury%20boxing&f=false

doh