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 When Jill Nalder arrived at drama school in London in the early 1980s, she was ready for her life to begin. With her band of best friends - of which many were young, talented gay men with big dreams of their own - she grabbed London by the horns: partying with drag queens at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, hosting cabarets at her glamorous flat, flitting across town to any jobs she could get. 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. It is Henry who disappears first, as a mysterious new illness arrives, hitting a now-familiar wall of fear, denial and misinformation. The disappearances keep coming. Friends from the scene “go home” to their families and never return, lost to what relatives might decide to call cancer. In March 2020, the former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe wrote a column for the Daily Express suggesting that Aids was one of a number of frightening epidemics that had not “proved as devastating as feared”. Though this series finished filming before the current pandemic, it stands as a riposte to such an abhorrent idea. The sheer waste of lives is devastating. 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.

Love From the Pink Palace by Jill Nalder BOOK REVIEW: Love From the Pink Palace by Jill Nalder

I had to take a long walk along the seafront after finishing the book, it’s quite the ripping yarn, ripping at the heart, emotionally raw. As we saw in It’s A Sin and can truly appreciate through her memoir, Jill has the ability to inspire through action. Engrossing, heart-breaking and inspiring, this is the perfect companion piece to IT'S A SIN' MATT CAINThere’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. 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. Despite the darkness and despair of parts of the book, Nalder skillfully combines snippets of humour, loads of love and joy and a deep humanity that , despite my tears, kept me reading on. Jill writes with ease, this makes it surprising this is her first book. Each chapter is filled with light and dark. They appear so close to each other that you go from crying to full-on belly laughing. Trust me, it gets fellow tube travellers very confused and leads to many an odd look. As it happens, I was also a Jill in the eighties – but not half as good a Jill as real Jill’ DAWN FRENCH

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

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. When Jill Nalder arrived at drama school in London in the early 1980s, she was ready for her life to begin. With her band of best friends – of which many were young, talented gay men with big dreams of their own – she grabbed London by the horns: partying with drag queens at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, hosting cabarets at her glamorous flat, flitting across town to any jobs could get. Sharing the enormous efforts of nurses, doctors, volunteers, lesbians, community reps who worked together to support the gay men falling ill across London, Jill shows how a community formed an effective response in the face of government apathy and negligence. Campaigning for AIDS awareness and research, channelling anger, and simply being there for people at the end. A heartbreaking, life-affirming memoir of love, loss and cabaret through the AIDS crisis, from IT'S A SIN's Jill NalderThe book is part career CV where names of different shows and different songs in them are dropped as if we should know them all. But what starts a a CV becomes the main part of the book when the show 'Les Miserable' becomes almost a character in itself, the yin to the yang of the A.I.D.S crisis. The author is pulled into deeper and deeper as different friends live by trail and error with different medications and and illnesses that young men are not expected to catch becoming part of a new caseload in hospitals for doctors to treat. As the author notes, a new caseload for doctors requires the renewing of their bedside manner, and adaptation in other ways too. There is also humour in the tragedy as different selves are revealed in the deaths of certain gay men than they revealed in their lives. A heartbreaking, life-affirming memoir of love, loss and cabaret through the AIDS crisis, from IT’S A SIN’s Jill Nalder 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. Jill met the crisis head on . . . She held the hands of so many men. She lost them, and remembered them, and somehow kept going'

PINK PALACE - Updated 2023 Reviews (Agios Gordios, Greece) THE PINK PALACE - Updated 2023 Reviews (Agios Gordios, Greece)

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. 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. But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the ‘gay flu’, and Jill and her friends – spirited Juan Pablo, Jae with his beautiful voice, upbeat Dursley, and many others – found that their formerly carefree existence now under threat.

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. Her tireless campaigning for Aids awareness and research is the heart of her friend Davies’s It’s A Sin (she has a cameo as the mother of the character inspired by her). In this livestreamed event, Nalder and Davies will be in conversation about both the memoir and the TV show, shining a light on the boys who were stigmatised and shamed, and remembering those who were lost too soon. 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

Former South Melbourne brothel turned apartment tower to go Former South Melbourne brothel turned apartment tower to go

The book could have been subtitled 'living with A.I.D.s as explored through three close friends', as the lives of three close friends of Jill Nalder are shared in the book, along with a few more distant friendships, mark the progress that doctors and hospitals make in managing the medication and emotional support of young men with A.I.D.s. for as long as the doctors can keep the young men alive.

But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the 'gay flu', and Jill and her friends - spirited Juan Pablo, Jae with his beautiful voice, upbeat Dursley, and many others - now found their formerly carefree existence under threat. 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. This is Jill Nalder’s first book and it’s a pretty astonishing debut which grips and holds you tight by the hand, urging you not to go, not to put out the light, not to leave a word unread. There’s something about Jill’s straightforward South Welsh narrating of her life which echos the flint and steel in the soul of this Neath girl. 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.