Most days, we'd probably take a pass on the chance to serve as beck-and-call errand boy for someone we'd never met. But if the someone in question was Queen frontman Freddie Mercury -- who turned arena rock on its ear with his larger-than-life theatrics -- then we'd give it the offer some serious thought.

The decision was a lot easier for Peter Freestone, who spent 12 years as Mercury's personal assistant and was there when the legendary frontman drew his last breath in 1991.

Freestone -- known best as "Phoebe" to the Queen camp -- first met Mercury at a charity gala at the Royal Opera House, where he worked as a wardrobe tech for the Royal Ballet. Though the encounter was brief, Mercury soon convinced Freestone to come work for him, setting the stage for a friendship that lasted until Mercury died of AIDS more than a decade later.

"I never had a contract and I never had a job description -- my job was simply to make his life easier," Freestone explains from his home in the Czech Republic. "I did the normal day-to-day things -- answering the telephone, doing the shopping, a bit of cooking, so Freddie had time to do the hard work, the creative work."

Though the arrangement required Freestone to put his own life on hold, he swears his relationship with Mercury -- which apparently remained platonic -- was reward enough.

"He would make up his mind about someone very quickly, so if you were a friend of his, you were a friend forever," Freestone says of Mercury, who would have celebrated his 60th birthday this year. "I'm the luckiest person I know to be able to say he was my friend, because he was the most kind, loyal, generous friend in the world."

Freestone has been skeptical about attempts to reunite Queen's surviving members, though he's now throwing his weight behind the tribute act Queen: It's a Kinda Magic, which returns to Winnipeg tonight for a show at Burton Cummings Theatre.

"They took me right back to when Queen were performing," he says of the first time he saw the act in Singapore. "The audience were on their feet, singing to the whole set. That's what they did for Queen back in the 1970s and 1980s ... They're the nearest I've seen to the Queen of the 1980s."

Freestone says Queen's legacy is the catalogue of classic rock gems the band left behind, noting anthems like We Are the Champions and We Will Rock You are still sung at sporting events the world over.

As for what Freddie would have thought about a tribute act? Freestone says he'd have been all for it.

"They do say that copying is the sincerest form of flattery. So I think he'd be flattered ... that people think enough of him to want to be him and to give people now what they've missed out on in years prior."

Tickets to Queen: It's a Kinda Magic are $45 to $65 through Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.ca or 780-3333).