Campaigners, crusaders and those who left too soon
THOM McGINTY AKA THE DICE MAN
Anyone who rambled up and down Grafton Street in the 1980s and early 1990s will remember the elegant Scot who wowed children big and small with his exaggerated winks and nods. When he went on to The Late Late
Show in 1994 and announced he had Aids it was a watershed moment. Here for the first time was someone we felt we knew, someone who lived among us with Aids and we adored him. He passed away in February 1995.
FREDDIE MERCURY
For a long time Freddie Mercury kept his health status to himself. As his partner, Carlow-born Jim Hutton described, “he felt it was his business”. Shortly before his death he released a statement in which he said he had Aids. Jim described their last conversation years later. “[It] took place a few days before he died. It was 6am. He wanted to look at his paintings. ‘How am I going to get downstairs?’ he asked. ‘I’ll carry you’, I said. But he made his own way, holding on to the banister. I kept in front to make sure he didn’t fall. I brought a chair to the door, sat him in it, and flicked on the spotlights, which lit each picture. He said, ‘Oh they’re wonderful’. I carried him upstairs to bed. He said, ‘I never realised you were as strong as you are’.”
MAGIC JOHNSON
NBA superstar Magic Johnson announced that he was infected with HIV in 1991. Initially he announced his retirement from the game but returned and played for numerous seasons on and off thereafter. Arguably, his announcement did more than anyone at the time to break stigma around HIV and Aids.
VINCENT HANLEY
From 1984-87, young people across Ireland would rush back from Sunday Mass to listen to the dulcet tones of the only preacher they really wanted to hear, the easy-going Fab Vinny. To the few that didn’t have family there, he was our only connection to New York and the music of the United States. Hanley, a hero to a generation, was the first Irish celebrity to die of an Aids-related illness, though it was not something that was confirmed publicly until years later.
GIA MARIE CARANGI
An American model and was considered by many the first supermodel. By the early 1980s she had become addicted to heroin and her modelling career went rapidly downhill. In 1986, she died of Aids-related complications, becoming one of the first famous women to die of the disease.