I was born in 1960 in Derry in Northern Ireland and grew up during the Troubles. On the first day of primary school, I met Georgie and Frankie and we became best friends. We didn’t know we were gay, or even what that meant at the time. At five years old, you don’t know why you make a friend. Maybe we’d seen something in each other that we didn’t yet understand. I was very lucky. We were 10 or 11 when Georgie said to me, ‘Do you think you fancy boys?’

The Troubles meant great tension and anger in the streets. Gangs went out at night looking for a soldier or policeman. We’d be the next best thing: they’d beat up the three queers. The name-calling, hidings, and kickings began in earnest at the age of 12.

I told my parents I was gay when I was 15. My sexuality played a greater part than religion in the amount of times I came home covered in blood. My family knew that as a gay teenager, I’d have no happiness in Derry, so they reluctantly agreed to let me go. At 16, the three of us left Derry and moved to London.

We found a bedsit in Kilburn and moved in together in 1976. We felt like we’d come home. The gay scene was fantastic. After Derry, it felt too good to be true.

We soon discovered the Black Cap in Camden. Drag every night. We met people there who stayed friends for years. Eventually we built up our own alternative family.

Around 1980, a new bar opened in Earl’s Court: Harpoon Louis, with a club downstairs, Copacabana. They held the first heat of an all-London drag competition. I dressed up, but I’d never done full drag. I don’t know how much I’d had to drink, but the next morning, my partner at the time, Paul, asked, ‘Do you remember what you did last night?’

I didn’t.

‘You put your name down for the next heat of the drag competition.’

A couple of drag queen friends let me borrow music to record and loaned me a few frocks – enough to put a 20-minute show together. It was all bravado: I didn’t want Paul thinking I was going to back out. I won that heat, and the next, and went on until I won the final. I soon began a double act called Rough Diamonds, then worked with a group of drag queens including Lily Savage, David Dale and Frankie Barry. We were called the Copycat Company. We toured the country having a blast.

But something was out there, waiting. It was 1981. We were in the Black Cap when the newspaper, Capital Gay, came out. We all read it to see what drag acts were on each weekend. There was a tiny paragraph: Mysterious illness killing gay men in San Francisco. I showed everybody. It was just a paragraph, but those few words scared us. Not long after we realised it was AIDS. And it was coming our way.

Doing drag, we’d get phone calls from people trying to raise money to get somebody treatment. Everybody wanted to do something once we all understood what was happening. We did benefits for whoever needed them. If somebody died and their family weren’t interested, we’d do a benefit night at the Black Cap and raise £2,000 to pay for the burial. It went from fun-drag to more than that. 

Tony Paul was a drag queen. When he got ill, we found an address book and saw a telephone number for his sister. Tony never mentioned his family. If you asked him he’d change the subject. But we called the sister to tell her that her brother was seriously ill, and if they wanted to see him they should get to St Mary’s Hospital fast.

‘We aren’t interested in coming to the hospital. Call us when he’s dead.’

Perhaps they were just in shock. When Tony died a few days later, we arranged to meet the sisters in a bar by the hospital. We’d laid Tony’s body out and thought they wanted to pay their last respects. But no.

‘We don’t want to see a dead body.’

We said, ‘What about his funeral?’

‘Do whatever you want. We don’t care.’

They left as quickly as they’d arrived. We had a benefit to raise money for his cremation. All the drag queens turned out and the pub was packed. After the funeral I saw my friend, Pat, on the dance floor at the Black Cap, reaching into his pockets. I could see something hitting the lights. I thought it was glitter.

‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s Tony! I’ve got Tony in my pocket!’

I was speechless.

Pat went on, ‘Tony spent half his life on the Heath and the other half in here. So half of Tony’s going to end up clinging to these walls. The other half I’m taking up the Heath tonight. He’s going to be in the two places he loved being.’ Somewhere in the walls of the Black Cap there’s a wee bit of Tony still!

We had another friend who died – Amber – a lovely drag queen from Nigeria. He never mentioned his family either and we’d no idea what his relationship with them was like. But when he died, they all arrived from Nigeria, and were the nicest people in the world. Heartbroken, but overwhelmed at how many friends he had. You couldn’t call it a happy ending, but at least Amber’s family went home knowing that their son was well loved.

In 1985 Georgie went for a routine sexual health check-up. Without knowing it, he’d been given an AIDS test. He took me with him when he got the phone call.

‘Your test results have come back. You’ve got the AIDS virus.’

I asked them right away to test me too.

Georgie said, ‘Don’t tell me any more today. We’ll talk about this when Frankie comes back for his results.’ We went to the Black Cap straight after and had a couple of joints.

‘I can’t take this. I don’t believe it,’ he said.

  When my results came back two weeks later, I was positive as well.

Georgie and I had a relationship. Sex was part of our friendship. But we came to London to give each other freedom, to enjoy ourselves. We’d had that. And now we both had our diagnoses.

Georgie had a partner but I’d just broken up with somebody. We went to a club in Shepherd’s Bush, Silks, on Saturday night. Georgie came up to me at the bar. ‘Can I talk to you outside?’

We went outside and he just punched me right in the face. I fell to the ground.

‘There you are up at the bar chatting someone else up!’

‘We can’t keep doing this. What are we going to do?’

‘Move back in together?’

And we did. By 1987, he’d started getting pneumonia. The temporary accommodation was a complete nightmare when Georgie was sick.  We didn’t have a proper bathroom. Georgie couldn’t wash. He was getting infections.

‘We’re going to have to go to the homeless persons’ unit. We can’t live like this.’

Thank God for Margaret on the counter that day. By the time we got to the front of the queue, it was gone 4pm. We’d been there since 9am.

I told her, ‘My partner’s sick. We’ve both been diagnosed with HIV. We’re in temporary accommodation. We don’t even have a bathroom.’

She disappeared for about 20 minutes. That woman got us into a beautiful flat in St John’s Wood. We didn’t return to that bedsit that night.

By that point, Georgie was already starting to have trouble with his mind. When we were robbed a few weeks later, he thought the burglary was personal. He began thinking that people on the street were police who were following us. He’d call me up at work and say, ‘When are you coming home?’

It was five past nine in the morning. I’d only just arrived.

‘Georgie, I’ve got loads of customers. I’ll call you back later.’

I’d put the phone down. Two seconds later, it would ring again. ‘When are you coming home?’

I took him to the hospital. We’d had the same doctor for a few years by then. I told her that Georgie was acting strangely. It turned out it was an infection to the brain, manifesting in paranoia.

One night our two closest friends were at the flat. We’d had a great time, but when I came back into the living room after saying goodbye, I couldn’t see Georgie. He was hiding behind a large plant in the corner.

‘Have they gone? Frankie, please don’t let them in again. Please…’ he was hysterical.

‘Georgie, that was our best friends. We see them every day.’

‘Those people were not our friends.’ He was insistent.

‘Georgie, I wouldn’t let anybody into this house that would harm you.’

‘Frankie, you don’t get it. They’re so smart that they’ve even fooled you.’

That was the last day we were allowed to have friends in the house. The last time we were allowed to have anybody in the house. Even hospital workers. Georgie thought the nurses and the doctors – everybody – was the police.

St Mary’s Hospital in Praed Street had amazing doctors. Libby Claydon took care of us. When she left in the late ‘90s, I went with Dr Mackie whom I still see. I think that relationship with the doctor is probably what kept most of us alive. It was a lifeline.

The hospital was a second home. When Georgie was really sick, I’d sleep on a mattress on the floor by his ward bed. Poor Georgie was on AZT, and the doses were too high. But of course, we didn’t know that until after he died. At the time they had to throw anything at it they could. And that’s all they had.

When Georgie died his service was held at the funeral home in Westbourne Grove. Georgie’s coffin was in a little private chapel. Outside the chapel was a big foyer with sofas, like in a hotel.

‘Are we allowed to bring booze in?’ we asked.

They told us we could do what we liked. We sent people off for lager, wine and plastic glasses. We had a party in the funeral parlour. Everybody had a chance to stand up and say why they loved Georgie and why they were going to miss him. Before Georgie died, another friend, Geoff, said, ‘I’m not fussed! You just can do whatever you want when I’m gone.’ But after Georgie’s funeral, Geoff said to me, ‘You know I told you that I don’t care how I go? I’ve changed my mind. I want my send-off to be as close to this as you can get it!’

I’ve got a photograph of Geoff. When it was first developed, I saw marks on his elbows. I pointed them out and asked whether he was aware of them.  He wasn’t, but it was the first signs of KS. When Geoff got sick, he called me and asked me and two other ex-partners to nurse him. He’d seen how I nursed Georgie. We created a rota system to care for him over three years. Geoff, like all people, had a horrible death. Within three years, his body was completely covered from head to toe. You couldn’t recognise him any more. We used tub after tub of E45; the skin was black and purple, so dried out it was cracking. You were afraid that if he moved his hand, it was going to crack open and start bleeding. It was one of the most horrific deaths I’ve witnessed. But he died at home, like Georgie, where he wanted to be, with all of us around him.

We did our best to give them the send-offs they deserved.