Britain’s best-known HIV charity was launched 40 years ago, but little is known about the man who inspired it. The trust’s co-founders, a former partner and a close friend, reflect on his extraordinary life and legacy
hen Rupert Whitaker met Terry Higgins, he was 18 years old, callow and just starting out in life. Higgins was 37, streetwise and, although neither knew it at the time, approaching the end of his. They spent a blissful year together in which Whitaker learned so much. “He taught me that there was love and affection and safety and great sex and fun – that itToday, Higgins continues to influence his life.
By the summer of 1981, however, he was back in London, where he met Higgins in the West End nightclub Bang. It was a life-transforming moment. They couldn’t have been more different. Higgins was a working-class man who had grown up in south Wales and left for London to live the life he wanted. He was easy in his skin and naturally flamboyant. Whitaker’s confidence was all front. “I was afraid of my own shadow.
Soon after they started dating, Whitaker left for Durham University to study psychology, anthropology and philosophy. But he would return to London most weekends to spend time with Higgins. Higgins was so patient with him, he says. In what way? “He was patient with my shyness. I was never enthusiastic about anything, because I didn’t know what it would entail. He’d be like: ‘Let’s go out to a club,’ and I’d be like: ‘OK.
Higgins had been a chunky man, known to his friends as Fat Terry. By the time Whitaker met him, he was losing weight because of his illness. His friends just thought he was shedding puppy fat and looked better for it. Higgins was pleased with it, too; he had no sense he was ill. Then he suddenly became extremely sick. Whitaker was away that weekend in France, singing in a concert. By the time he got back, Higgins had been hospitalised after collapsing at the gay nightclub Heaven.
Did Higgins have that kind of life, too? “Absolutely not,” he says. “He was the most self-assured man I ever met.” Butler, who is 67, was 10 years younger than Higgins. Like Whitaker, he was a diffident young man whom Higgins protected. He quickly became part of the family Higgins created. “For once, I had somebody who didn’t want anything from me. Terry didn’t want sex, he didn’t want my money, he didn’t want anything. And here he was, helping me out, showing me the ropes, standing up for me.
“Even more upsetting sometimes were those people who were ‘family’ – people we looked out for and treasured and they just stopped coming.” They would disappear overnight, he says. “They’d go back to Birmingham or Northampton or whatever village they came from – and they’d never come back. You had no idea what kind of support they had when they went home. It might have been good, it might have been atrocious.
They also made it clear that they were astonished to see Whitaker. They expected him to be dead. Today, he is one of Britain’s longest HIV survivors.
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