Love from the Pink Palace: Memories of Love, Loss and Cabaret through the AIDS Crisis, for fans of IT'S A SIN

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In particular, one of Jill’s fallen friends tried everything to survive until they were drugs available to control the HIV virus – they very sadly did not but did inspire others to fight on. Some of those are still with us today. That friend made it to 7 August 1995, painfully close to life-saving triple-drug therapy that would arrive less than 12 months later. It was not just Phantom of the Opera that was robbed of such talent. We all were. Time and again.

Love from the Pink Palace by Jill Nalder | Waterstones

There’s a delicious honouring foreword from fellow Wales born – Russell T Davies – who shares his love for Jill and the reasons he based It’s A Sin on her life. The book is full of joy, of wonderful anecdotes and insights into lives long gone, letting them flash into our memories with a golden whirl of camp gay radiance. The book grinds on though, and it’s a hard read at points, the speed and ruthlessness of beautiful men dying is hard to take, if (fictional character from It’s A Sin) Derek’s death made you cry, be prepared to share the grief still felt by Jill for the deaths of so many others. The author talks a little about the process of the 'coming out' part, but she keeps to herself the most private revelations the young men reveal to her as she plays 'mother hen'/parental substitute to them in different settings. As 'mother hen' she relays very well the disappointment of the young gay men who don't know how to respond to their parents' disappointment in their children's new found honesty with their feelings. What she does not say, which I will, is that as the young men 'come out' they also learn how many feelings and personal choices their parents were taught to suppress in their youth, feelings and actions which the parents expect the young men to suppress in their turn. But the inability to suppress same sex desire is more complex than either parent or young man can understand, but the young men at least try to understand-and create a model that other young men in less open circumstances may try to adapt.Russell T Davies is a good friend of Jill and it’s clear from this book how much of her life he actually used as raw material for It’s A Sin and there’s a lot of memories obviously too naughty for the TV but included with relish in this memoir. So what was it like to be gay and live in 1980s and 1990s London? This book will tell you everything you need to know, and more. Like a book I read previously and reviewed here, by a different author, I came to this book via BBC radio. With this book, the radio programme records the author joining her old friend, and the writer of the foreword of this book, Russell T Davies https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dn... It is a tonic to listen to. There’s a lovely narrative ebb and flow to the book, a lyrical Welshness to it, which allows us to settle down into the story with some joy before the darkness comes in again, then light again, then night deeper than dread, then a dawn, cold, quiet but with things to do to get us through.

Pink Palace, Scratby - Cylex Pink Palace, Scratby - Cylex

But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the 'gay flu', and Jill and her friends now found their formerly carefree existence under threat.

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Jill met the crisis head on . . . She held the hands of so many men. She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going' This book resonated with me because I was around Jill's age and just starting University at the start of the AIDS crisis and this is such a valuable addition to the history books of that period. I actually liked how Jill made some references to the Covid-19 pandemic in her book, as really it's one of the closest things we have now in modern memory to compare to the terrifying era that was the AIDS epidemic including the fear and vilifying of a particular group of people. From healthcare to people in the street, it was too long a time before suffering gay men were treated with the respect that they and any human being deserves as their bodies were slowly ravaged by an illness that takes no prisoners. Jill also makes sure to point out in her book as well how AIDs diagnoses also affected many women and how testing procedure failed women and children who may have contracted the disease whether it be through sexual relations, blood transfusions, or in utero. Jill is a busy person, quite how they managed to do so much is a miracle. She is also modest, and although allowing the wonderful excitement of her life to shine here, often through the lens of others’ lives, she also shares the gratitude of being able to experience such talented people.

Jill Nalder and Russell T Davies: Love From the Pink Palace

Jill met the crisis head on . . . She held the hands of so many men. She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going' RUSSELL T DAVIES Love from the Pink Palace is Nalder’s moving account of London during the Aids crisis. It recounts her life as an actor who partied with drag queens and hosted cabarets in her flat, painting a portrait of a city wrapped up in glamour and hope – until rumours arrived from America about a frightening illness dubbed the “gay flu”. As the Aids virus spread across London, Nalder watched as her friends, once vibrant and full of life, started disappearing to die in secret.

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A heartbreaking, life-affirming memoir of love, loss and cabaret through the AIDS crisis, from IT’S A SIN’s Jill Nalder How was it possible to enjoy It’s a Sin, knowing what was to come? Russell T Davies’s great skill was in making it seem like it would be rude not to. It might have been reasonable to expect a certain solemnity from this five-part drama about the arrival of Aids in Britain and the devastation it wrought, but what was less predictable, perhaps, was the furious, beautiful joy of it. It was gut-wrenching and it was terrible, but god, it was funny and it was full of life. Jill met the crisis head on . . . She held the hands of so many men. She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going’ RUSSELL T DAVIES As it happens, I was also a Jill in the eighties - but not half as good a Jill as real Jill' DAWN FRENCH