An oral history and public-education audio archive documenting the lived experience of people living with HIV in the UK. The series captures testimony at a moment when institutional memory, peer support, and long-term survivor narratives are being eroded, despite medical progress. Led by Emmy award-winning documentary producer Dan Hall, the project is building a long-form archive of recorded testimonies for public, community, and educational use.
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One of the UK's longest-surviving people with HIV, diagnosed in October 1982, on bathhouses in San Francisco, standing in the darkest corner of the bar, and why a man in crimson pantaloons saved his life.
Summary
In 1982, Jonathan Blake was a 33-year-old actor waiting tables at Joe Allen in Covent Garden. London was horny. He'd just come back from San Francisco and the steam baths. His lymph nodes swelled until he was walking like a gorilla. At the Middlesex Hospital, the cultures took a couple of days. When the results came back: you have a virus, there is no cure, you've got between two and nine months to live. But you can go home.
He felt like a modern-day leper. He would go to the bars in Earl's Court and stand in the darkest corner - wanting people but unable to engage. What was his opening line? Hello, my name is Jonathan, I have this killer virus coursing through my veins. He planned suicide: a hot bath, pills, razorblades. Then his mother's voice: Jonathan, you clear up your own mess. So like a nice Jewish boy, if you can't kill yourself, you better get on and live.
On 1 April 1983, he saw a tiny advert in Capital Gay for a coach to Greenham Common. It said: everybody welcome. As he turned to flee, a voice said: hello, my name is Nigel. Green Wellington boots, crimson pantaloons, a mop of black curly hair. Nigel brought banana and two jam doughnuts to tea and suggested they squat together in Brixton. Jonathan thought: I've got about two months to live. Why not? They were companions for almost 38 years. Jonathan refused AZT, refused the Concorde trial, and survived to combination therapy in 1996. The morning of the fourth week, he woke with such energy he laid a patio. It's still there.
Key Moments
[00:00] "You have a virus" - diagnosed at the Middlesex Hospital, two to nine months to live, but you can go home
[04:33] San Francisco steam baths - Turkish baths, fuck rooms, and the year before everything changed
[09:51] The darkest corner of the bar - wanting people but unable to speak, and the worst chat-up line in history
[12:41] The Roman way - planning suicide, and a Jewish mother's voice pulling him back
[14:50] 1 April 1983 - the tiny advert, the coach to Greenham Common, and the man in crimson pantaloons who gave him a life
[22:43] English National Opera - a letter on a noticeboard thanking colleagues for supporting a man who'd died of AIDS, and thinking: when I get ill, they'll understand
[26:56] Refusing AZT - the Concorde trial, the belief that never touching the drug is why he's still alive
[33:14] The morning of the fourth week - combination therapy, the energy of Atlas, and a patio that's still there
[41:30] U=U - the first unprotected sex since before 1982
[45:07] Care homes and the closet - the biggest fear of ageing: I ain't going back in the closet
Dedication
Jonathan remembers George Hudson, met in the Coleherne in 1977, and Nigel Young, who gave him a life and died in 2022.
About Jonathan Blake
Jonathan Blake was diagnosed with HIV in October 1982 and is one of the UK's longest-term survivors. An actor, tailor, and activist, his role in Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners was depicted in the film Pride. He lives in south London with a contorted hazel tree he planted in 1989 - a tree injected with something that makes it grow differently, just like him.
Positively UK - A peer-led organisation offering support and advice for people living with HIV, including women, youth, and migrants.
The Love Tank - An organisation focusing on wellbeing of queer communities, especially Black and brown people, through projects like PrEPster and The Grass Is Always Grindr.
Positive East - London-based support centre offering HIV testing, counselling, community outreach, and health services.
PrEPster - Community-led PrEP (HIV prevention pill) education project. Offers clear and inclusive info for diverse audiences across the UK.
National AIDS Trust - A UK policy and campaigning organisation dedicated to ending HIV stigma and promoting effective HIV policies.
aidsmap - A trusted source for up-to-date, evidence-based information on HIV. Great for learning about treatment, living with HIV, and current research.
Terrence Higgins Trust - The UK’s leading HIV and sexual health charity. Offers support, testing info, prevention resources (PrEP), and education materials.
In the Key of Q - Podcast celebrating Queer musicians and their stories, also produced by Dan Hall.
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A mother of four, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and one of the UK's most influential HIV advocates - diagnosed in rural Louisiana in 1999 when an immigration doctor told her she had about seven years to live.
Summary
Susan Cole-Haley had recently married her second ex-husband - she collects them, she says, like shoes - and moved to rural Louisiana. The immigration HIV test didn't cross her mind. The doctor said: the good news is you don't have syphilis. The bad news is you're HIV positive. He gave her about seven years. Her children were five and seven. She didn't know anything about combination therapy. Back in the UK, her mother sent Aidsmap booklets across the Atlantic, and Susan realised the doctor was wrong.
Her own GP had previously refused to test her - oh no, dear, that doesn't affect ladies like you. When she told her father, his first words were: make sure you don't tell anyone. Years later, an oncologist treating her for triple negative breast cancer asked how she got HIV and circled HIV POSITIVE on her blood test notes. Susan changed hospitals.
She went on to work for Aidsmap and the UK Coalition of People Living with HIV, posed naked on a magazine cover while heavily pregnant to show that women with HIV could have children born free of the virus, and co-founded the Phoenix Health Movement to address health inequalities affecting Black women. Her son James now works for the National AIDS Trust.
Key Moments
[03:04] Rural Louisiana, January 1999 - an immigration test, no syphilis, and about seven years to live
[04:27] Tombstones and icebergs - all she knew about HIV was the 1980s campaigns, and children aged five and seven
[07:42] "Make sure you don't tell anyone" - her father's first words, rooted in Jamaican stigma and a desire to protect
[08:50] The GP who refused - told it doesn't affect ladies like you, and warned it could stop her getting a mortgage
[12:54] Triple negative breast cancer - a second diagnosis, an oncologist who circled HIV POSITIVE, and the decision to change hospitals
[18:14] Telling the children - years of silence, and children whose only complaint was that she didn't tell them sooner
About Susan Cole-HaleyResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Jim Vogiatzis: Diagnosis, Defiance, Dogs
Season 1 · Episode 3
Thursday, October 2, 2025 • Duration 38:45
An HIV survivor and activist diagnosed in 1988 who held the hand of a dying lover, left London Weekend Television through ill health, and found emotional support in a Battersea rescue dog called Ron.
Summary
In 1988, Jim Vogiatzis was working at London Weekend Television and noticing that his partner was becoming frail with unexplained illnesses - illnesses that coincided with his own. He asked repeatedly. His partner could not bring himself to say. Jim went to James Pringle House, identified only by a number in a waiting room of twenty men giving each other knowing looks. The two-week wait was a nightmare. On the tube journey back, he rehearsed every scenario. The doctor said: I'm really sorry to tell you, but you're HIV positive. Jim left the clinic as fast as he could, walked outside for fresh air, then went straight back to work.
He had already watched friends die - stroking their hair, telling them they were loved - and he chose early to be in the fight rather than be a bystander. The early combination therapy pills required alarms set for the middle of the night: you never felt truly rested. The side effects have lasted decades - peripheral neuropathy, osteoporosis, and incontinence from PCP that has stopped him being in a relationship.
Jim held his lover Stuart as he died - ten days after a stroke that destroyed the active person he had been. One moment they were talking; the next, Stuart looked at him, and passed away. Today, Jim shares his flat with Ron, a Battersea rescue dog who pawed his arm through the bars of his pen and has given him focus and companionship in isolation.
Key Moments
[00:01] Midnight alarms - the early combination therapy regime: pills during the day, alarms in the night, and never feeling truly rested
[02:42] The diagnosis - 1988, James Pringle House, identified by number, and a tube journey rehearsing every possible outcome
[05:07] The mask at work - continuing at London Weekend Television, keeping up the smiling face while waiting for results
[07:55] Holding hands with the dying - watching friends become frail, being there when they died, and seeing it as a privilege
[24:41] Stuart - a warrior, an activist, a lover who was afraid to be loved but wanted to be loved
DedicationAbout Jim VogiatzisResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Martin Fenerty: Trauma, Time, Transformation
Season 1 · Episode 4
Thursday, October 9, 2025 • Duration 46:19
A gay man from Liverpool diagnosed with HIV in 1993 at 23, who held suicide as a safety net for years before channelling his experience into a career as an NHS psychotherapist - and who inherited a cat called Ava.
Summary
Martin Fenerty was 23 and had been out as a gay man for only a couple of years when, in the summer of 1993, a cold sore erupted into an extreme facial herpes outbreak that covered his face and neck. His GP didn't question why. He went to the Seaman's Dispensary in Liverpool, a sexual health clinic favoured by gay men and sex workers for its open-mindedness, but the service transferred to the Royal Liverpool Hospital while his sample was at the laboratory. A health adviser turned up at his door at five o'clock on a long, rainy November evening.
For years, Martin held the idea of suicide as a safety net - if things get too difficult, at least I can end my own life. He kept it as a back pocket option while navigating the early antiretrovirals, the stigma of 1990s Liverpool, and a family that had already struggled with his sexuality. What pulled him through was a man called Mark Morrell Williams, the first person with HIV he ever met - introduced to him in a hospital bed, of all places. Mark ran Body Positive in Chester and lived openly with HIV in the 1990s. He became Martin's role model. Mark died in 1997, aged 39, just before combination therapy could have saved him.
Martin went on to build a career as a counsellor and psychotherapist, working in the NHS, the charitable sector, and LGBTQ+ and HIV services. He lives with his husband and a cat called Ava, inherited from a friend who passed away - sometimes referred to as the spiritual leader of the country.
Key Moments
[00:05] Suicide as a safety net - the idea of ending his own life held as a back pocket option for years
[03:12] Liverpool, 1993 - diagnosed at 23, two years after coming out, with a family still adjusting to his sexuality
[03:56] Facial herpes - an extreme outbreak that made socialising impossible and a GP who didn't ask why
[06:05] The Seaman's Dispensary - a clinic for seafarers, favoured by gay men, transferring to the Royal Liverpool while his sample was in the lab
DedicationAbout Martin FenertyResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
A pioneering HIV advocate diagnosed in 1986 with a three-year-old daughter, who co-founded Positively Women - the UK's first peer-led support organisation for women living with HIV - and spent nearly four decades doing the work that mattered.
Summary
In 1986, Caroline Guinness was diagnosed with what was then called HTLV-III after a locum doctor performed a test without her permission. She'd had a relationship with a bisexual man in an open couple and felt an icy premonition, but told the doctor she did not want to know the result. He came to her flat anyway. He said: I know you didn't want to know, but I think you're too intelligent not to. She was positive. Her daughter was three.
Her first thought was her child. Her business partner screamed down the phone: I can't take another one - someone I love dying. Caroline felt a sheet of glass go down between her and the rest of the world. She was functioning but no longer part of it. She'd been working in music - management for The Who, music videos with big directors - and her career was thriving. The virus didn't care.
What followed was the creation of Positively Women, now Positively UK, one of the UK's first peer-led support organisations specifically for women with HIV. Caroline built it from the ground up, understanding that women needed to see themselves reflected in the response. She supported Ugandan refugees, sat with dying women in hospital, and once went out to buy a pineapple for a woman called Harriet who was homesick and wanted to taste one again. When she came back, Harriet was dead. That has stuck with her.
Key Moments
[02:30] 1986 - a locum doctor performs a test she didn't consent to, and comes to her flat with a result she didn't want
[04:13] The icy feeling - knowing something was wrong after a relationship with a bisexual man, and telling the doctor she didn't want to know
[06:14] A three-year-old daughter - the immediate fear of transmission, plasters on cut fingers, and knowing nothing about how the virus spread
[07:11] "I can't take another one" - a business partner's screamed reaction, and the lesson that telling people you love will not go the way you expect
- functioning but no longer part of the world, detachment as a form of survival
DedicationAbout Caroline GuinnessResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Anthony Bird: Dancing, Diagnosis, Defiance
Season 1 · Episode 6
Thursday, October 23, 2025 • Duration 43:28
A graphic designer who went from a back clinic to an AIDS diagnosis in 1995, was hospitalised with PCP at seven and a half stone, and watched 30,000 balloons released at Pride - each one representing someone who died - thinking: next year one of those is going to be me.
Summary
Tony Bird moved to London in 1990 and worked as a graphic designer in Soho. By autumn 1995, he had a cough his GP dismissed as nothing. He'd lost a huge amount of weight. At a back clinic, a doctor listened to his symptoms and said: I'm not the person to do this, but I think maybe you should have an HIV test. Three days later, Tony couldn't put his boots on. A gay GP neighbour called Julian came over, listened to his chest, and called an ambulance immediately. Princess Diana was on the television in the ambulance - the Panorama interview, three of us in this marriage. By admission, he was seven and a half stone. He was 28.
The doctors said: we think you've got PCP. Are you aware of the implications of that? Tony had seen And the Band Played On. He knew exactly what PCP was. He felt relief - finally someone was taking it seriously. A month in hospital, including intensive care, and then home to Brixton Hill by Christmas. But he had no confidence in the medication. The drugs targeted HIV at only one point in its reproduction cycle, and resistance came quickly. At Pride that year, they released 30,000 balloons, each representing someone who had died. Tony thought: next year one of those is going to be me.
Combination therapy arrived, and with it, a future he hadn't planned for. Today, Tony is happier than at any point in his life. He takes one pill a day, sees his consultant twice a year, and dances with a community that makes newcomers feel welcome. He is a gay man in his late fifties for whom HIV has very little daily effect - and that, after 1995, is its own kind of miracle.
Key Moments
[00:01] 30,000 balloons - each one representing someone who died of AIDS, released at Pride, and the thought: next year one is going to be me
[03:11] The cough that wouldn't go - a GP who dismissed it, a back clinic that suggested an HIV test, and the walk from Soho to Oxford Circus that required sitting down on the pavement
[04:34] Julian from next door - the gay GP neighbour who listened to Tony's chest and called an ambulance immediately
DedicationAbout Anthony BirdResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Matthew Hodson: Science, Sovereignty, Survival
Season 1 · Episode 7
Thursday, October 30, 2025 • Duration 48:59
One of Britain's most enduring HIV and LGBTQ+ activists, who lived privately with HIV for years before becoming its most visible advocate.
Summary
Matthew Hodson has lived openly and, in his own words, shamelessly with HIV for over 27 years. His career in activism spans the pre-treatment era through to the age of U=U, and his core philosophy is simple: every time you take something that is used against you and make it into your own armour, it loses its power to hurt you.
Matthew worked as the first admin assistant and then project manager of the Positive Campaign Group at Gay Men Fighting AIDS, producing campaigns that encouraged openness about HIV status - while he himself had not yet gone public. A volunteer called James Quinlan was the one who stood in front of the camera: very handsome, very brash, drove like a maniac, and happy to be photographed in leather trousers and no shirt. James had made the decision that he wasn't going to hide. He died about sixteen years ago. His body had taken a beating from early drugs and the virus.
Matthew frames ageing with HIV as a privilege denied to many of his contemporaries from the 80s and 90s - people who never Googled anything, never went on Grindr, never knew a world where gay people could marry. He is sharply aware that global funding cuts mean people are dying in greater numbers this year than last.
Key Moments
[00:01] Armour from shame - turning what is used against you into protection, and the power of living shamelessly
[02:10] Three decades of activism - from the height of the epidemic to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, and the principle that what you do matters
[38:42] The first openly HIV-positive chair - leading Gay Men Fighting AIDS in 2021, and why it took until then
[38:47] The Denver Principles - nothing about us without us, established in 1983, and the Act Up protesters who stormed the Montreal Aids conference in 1989
[40:12] HIV and the Covid vaccine - how HIV research enabled the rapid development of the Covid vaccine
[40:19] Ageing as privilege - contemporaries who never Googled, never used Grindr, never saw gay marriage, because their lives were snuffed out
DedicationAbout Matthew HodsonResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Peter Willis: Medicine, Malcolm, Mortality
Season 1 · Episode 8
Thursday, November 6, 2025 • Duration 27:43
An 83-year-old retired GP who treated patients and friends during the epidemic while quietly assuming he was positive himself, lost his partner Malcolm to HIV, and told him at the end: it's all right, love - you can go.
Summary
Peter Willis is 83, a retired GP who brings a dual perspective to HIV: doctor and patient, clinician and bereaved partner. During the height of the epidemic, he was treating patients and friends while living with the private assumption that he too was positive - long before his actual diagnosis confirmed it.
His partner Malcolm was a theatre director with his own company, an intensely critical scholar from a working class background, and the only person in his school ever to have taken an O-level. They were together for sixteen years. When Malcolm was dying of pleurisy, Peter lay in bed beside him. His two nephews - young men on their way to a ferry for a European holiday - drove down from Northampton in the middle of the night to stand silently by the bedside. Peter leaned in and whispered: it's all right, love. You can go. I'll be all right without you. Malcolm stopped trying to breathe.
The funeral was standing room only. The organist managed to play Somewhere on the oldest organ in London. As Peter walked past the churchwarden, she said: I've never heard anything so wonderful about love. He is very proud of that.
Three decades later, Peter lives with his Japanese partner. He has discovered pottery, navigates a handful of pills twice a day, and considers U=U one of the most wonderful developments in the history of the virus.
Key Moments
[00:01] "I've never heard anything so wonderful about love" - the churchwarden's words after Malcolm's funeral
[02:02] Dual perspective - treating patients and friends during the epidemic while quietly assuming he was positive himself
[17:50] Ageing with HIV - what the health and social care systems need to provide, and the reliance on people who do far more than they're rewarded for
[19:43] U=U - an absolutely wonderful development that removed the fear from relationships
[20:25] Malcolm - a theatre director, a scholar, intensely critical, who played Rothko while dying and whose students still won't take a job without wondering whether he'd approve
DedicationAbout Peter WillisResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Marc Thompson: Resistance, Roots, Resilience
Season 1 · Episode 10
Thursday, November 20, 2025 • Duration 59:55
The lead commissioner of the London HIV Prevention Programme, diagnosed at 17 in 1986, who didn't know anyone with HIV who looked like him - and built the representation, the communities, and the change he desperately needed.
Summary
In 1986, Marc Thompson was 17, newly out, and discovering the gay scene in south London - not Soho, not Earl's Court, but the Prince of Wales pub in Brixton and house parties on council estates in Peckham. The central London venues were not welcoming to Black queer people. Racist door policies. You had to prove you were gay. And if you got past the door, you faced racist punters inside. So Marc's community made its own spaces.
HIV, as far as he knew, was a white man's thing. The news coverage showed older white men in the United States. The rules in his community were simple: don't sleep with Americans, and this doesn't affect us. No one talked about protection. The first safer sex information for UK gay men hadn't been produced yet. And even if it had, there was no route for it to reach a young Black man in Brixton whose social life didn't go through the pubs where leaflets were left.
In November 1986, he went to Westminster Hospital because his mates were doing it. Two weeks later, the results came back positive. The world stopped. Walking to meet a friend for lunch, two things kept reverberating: how was he going to tell his Windrush-generation Jamaican grandfather, and he would never have children. He descended into a deep depression. When he accessed services, he was the only Black gay man there, the only young person, the only one who hadn't been ill. He didn't know anyone who had HIV who looked like him.
Marc has spent over three decades building exactly what he needed and never had: representation, community, visibility for Black queer people in the HIV response. He co-founded The Love Tank, leads the London HIV Prevention Programme, and uses the phrase "bung down Babylon" with the ease of a man who means it. His dedication is not to an individual but to all the nameless Black gay men who died in the epidemic in isolation, fear, and shame - forgotten long ago.
Key Moments
[01:24] "Aren't they fucking on the graves of the people that died?" - the judgement of younger generations by older survivors, and why Marc pushes back against it
DedicationAbout Marc ThompsonResourcesThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
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[21:16] The naked magazine cover - four-inch heels, sheepskin, airbrushed cellulite, and a woman who saw the article and chose not to have a termination
[24:04] Health inequalities and Black women - pain not believed, concerns dismissed, and a grandmother whose hospital notes read "why bother"
[29:33] Phoenix Health Movement - co-founded with Dr Vanessa Appiah to address inequalities in healthcare for Black women
[33:57] Seven years to a fellowship - from a death sentence in Louisiana to Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
Susan Cole-Haley was diagnosed with HIV in January 1999 in Louisiana. She is a writer, broadcaster, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and co-founder of the Phoenix Health Movement. She has four children, all HIV-free, a white German Shepherd, and a Romanian rescue dog. Her son James works for the National AIDS Trust.
[25:55] PCP, a stroke, and ten days - Stuart's rapid deterioration, the decision to die at home, and the moment he passed
[29:10] The physical legacy - peripheral neuropathy, osteoporosis, incontinence, and the side effects that last a lifetime
[34:10] Ron - a Battersea rescue dog who pawed Jim's arm through the bars and became his emotional support
Jim remembers Stuart, a warrior, activist, and lover who left an indelible mark on his heart.
Jim Vogiatzis was diagnosed with HIV in 1988. He worked in media at London Weekend Television until ill health prevented him from continuing. He is an activist, fundraiser, and passionate advocate for human rights. He lives with his rescue dog Ron.
[07:52] The rainy November doorstep - a health adviser arriving at five o'clock with results
[39:05] Mark Morrell Williams - the first person with HIV Martin ever met, introduced in a hospital bed, a role model who died in 1997 at 39
[42:18] Ava the cat - inherited from a friend, occasionally referred to as the spiritual leader of the country, and very much the centre of the home
Martin remembers Mark Morrell Williams, who ran Body Positive in Chester, lived openly with HIV in the 1990s, and died in 1997 aged 39 - just before combination therapy arrived. Martin supported him through the last 18 months.
Martin Fenerty is a 55-year-old gay man from Liverpool, diagnosed with HIV in 1993 at 23. He works as a counsellor and psychotherapist in the NHS, the charitable sector, LGBTQ+ and HIV services, and private practice. He lives with his husband and a cat called Ava.
[09:37] Tim and the gay ex-husband - the first husband who couldn't believe it wasn't him, who said "it should be me," and who was there when her daughter was born
[44:14] Positively Women - co-founding the UK's first peer-led HIV support organisation for women, and the pride that still lives in her voice
[45:22] The pineapple - buying a pineapple for Harriet, a Ugandan refugee with meningitis who was homesick for the taste of home. When Caroline came back, she was dead
Caroline remembers Harriet, the Ugandan refugee with the love of pineapples, and Douglas (Ted) Lambert, an American actor who played Rothko while dying.
Caroline Guinness co-founded and led Positively Women, now Positively UK, one of the first peer-led support organisations for women living with HIV in the UK. She was diagnosed in 1986 with a three-year-old daughter. She previously worked in the music industry, managing bands and making music videos. She has been living with HIV for nearly four decades.
[04:54] 20 November 1995 - admitted to hospital at seven and a half stone, down from ten, with Princess Diana on the ambulance TV
[06:29] PCP and relief - told he had an AIDS-defining illness, and the strange comfort of finally knowing why
[09:07] No confidence in the drugs - one class of medication, rapid resistance, and the certainty that treatment wouldn't keep him alive
[09:37] "I'm not going to live until I'm 30" - one bleak night in hospital, telling his partner
[38:47] 2025 - one pill a day, consultant twice a year, and very little daily effect. Happier now than at any point in his life
Tony remembers those represented by the 30,000 balloons released at Pride - each one a person who died of AIDS.
Anthony Bird is a graphic designer who was diagnosed with an AIDS-defining illness in November 1995 at the age of 28. He was hospitalised with PCP at seven and a half stone. He lives in London and describes himself as happier now than at any point in his life.
[42:06] Funding cuts and rising deaths - Trump's cuts to USAID, UK budget reductions, and more people dying this year than last
Matthew remembers James Quinlan, a Gay Men Fighting AIDS volunteer who was very handsome, drove like a maniac, and appeared on campaign posters in leather trousers with no shirt. James lived openly with HIV and died about sixteen years ago.
Matthew Hodson is one of the UK's most influential HIV and LGBTQ+ activists. He has lived with HIV for over 27 years and was the first openly HIV-positive chair of Gay Men Fighting AIDS. He is a writer, campaigner, and advocate for living shamelessly with HIV.
[23:13] "You can go" - lying in bed with Malcolm, whispering permission to stop fighting, and the moment he stopped trying to breathe
[24:13] The oldest organ in London - Somewhere played at the funeral, nephews who drove through the night, and standing room only
Peter remembers Malcolm, his partner of sixteen years - a theatre director, a self-educated scholar, an intensely critical man who played Rothko while dying and whose last role was the one he was most proud of.
Peter Willis is an 83-year-old retired GP who treated patients and friends during the height of the HIV epidemic. He lost his partner Malcolm to HIV and has lived with the virus himself for decades. He now lives with his Japanese partner of nearly 30 years and has taken up pottery.
[02:38] Brixton, 1986 - the Prince of Wales pub, house parties on council estates, and the spaces Black queer people created because central London wasn't safe for them
[04:11] Racist door policies - having to prove you were gay to get into venues, and facing racist punters inside
[06:42] "A white man's thing" - why HIV wasn't on the radar for a young Black gay man in south London, and the absence of any safer sex information that could reach him
[09:10] Westminster Hospital, November 1986 - a test because his mates were doing it, and a result that stopped the world
[10:23] The tunnel - walking to lunch with no sound, thinking only of his grandfather and the children he would never have
[11:36] "I didn't know anyone who had HIV who looked like me" - the only Black gay man in support services, the only young person, and the weight of that isolation
[52:08] Ageing without a plan - no pension, no financial stability, lost friends and lovers, and the fear of having to come out all over again to Maureen in the care home
[54:36] The nameless Black gay men - alliums and calla lilies planted for every forgotten man who died in isolation, fear, and shame
Marc does not name an individual. He plants alliums and calla lilies for all the nameless Black gay men in the UK and abroad who died in the epidemic alone, in fear, with shame, with no family around them - forgotten in the history because they were forgotten long before that.
Marc Thompson is the lead commissioner of the London HIV Prevention Programme and one of the UK's most influential HIV activists. He was diagnosed at 17 in 1986 in Brixton. He co-founded The Love Tank and has spent over three decades building representation and community for Black queer people in the HIV response. His message to the world: be more love tank.
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