Emily O'Reilly

So that was the environment in which Brian headed off to New York.

His timing was terrible.

He went from one hell into another hell because in 1981, June 1981, was the first official recording of AIDS in the sense that the CDC, the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, issued the first report about the deaths of five young gay men from a form of pneumonia.

And these were the first recorded deaths from AIDS in the United States.

And between 1981, which is the time that Brian went, and 1990, sorry, 1981 and 1995, which is just before the

Miracle drugs came on stream.

Approximately 60,000 gay and bisexual men died in New York City alone.

So it was literally a plague.

And it was as if your entire community was being wiped out in front of your eyes.

And of course, you didn't know whether you were going to get it.

And if you did get it, there was no cure.

He did.

Brian was very open about these things.

He came home in 1990 and I remember it very well because our first child was born that year.

So that's a big memory as well.

Brian came home from New York and he told me that he was HIV positive.

And his great friend Vincent and other great friends had died in the previous few years.

So he knew, you know, what the prognosis was likely to be, what the outcome of this was likely to be.

Yeah, it was.

And it happened very quickly as well.