Crowdfunder Link: RIO CALLING Fundraising Link

This is a special compilation episode featuring highlights from Series 1 and 2 of HIV: The Morning After, released ahead of Series 3 in June 2026.

A life can divide cleanly into before and after. This episode sits in the gap between them - in the waiting room, the clinic corridor, the flat you don't remember getting back to.

It covers what it felt like to receive a diagnosis across four different decades, from 1982 to the early 2020s: the isolation that followed, the absence of information aimed at people like you, the impossible mask worn at work, the referral slip kept under a bed for months. It covers what it means to plan your own death and then, for reasons you didn't expect, not go through with it. And it covers what it means to be the youngest voice in a series like this - diagnosed in an era of effective treatment, never having personally lost anyone to HIV, and yet carrying the weight of that history as something visceral and present.

Content note: this episode contains a description of suicidal ideation.

Resources

Terrence Higgins Trust - HIV information, support and campaigning www.tht.org.uk

NAM aidsmap - Clear, evidence-based information about HIV www.aidsmap.com

Positively UK - Peer support for people living with HIV in the UK www.positivelyuk.org

National AIDS Trust - Policy and advocacy www.nat.org.uk

Samaritans - Free, confidential support if you're struggling Call: 116 123 | www.samaritans.org

Links

Listen to the full episodes:

• Jonathan Blake - Series 1, Episode 1
• Jim Vogiatzis - Series 1, Episode 3
• Angelina Namiba - Series 2, Episode 3
• Jan - Series 2, Episode 8

Music by Paul Leonidou: www.unstoppablemonsters.com

Subscribe and listen on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Mentioned in this episode:

RIO CALLING! Crowd-funder

We're taking over the feed for 'Rio Calling': six daily despatches from AIDS 2026, the world's biggest HIV conference. Each day Dan Glass and I will bring you the stories that matter most to people living with HIV and the people working to end it - straight from the conference floor in Rio. The wonderful folks at BHIVA have helped get us there, but there remains a funding gap. The rest is down to you. If you can chip in via the Crowdfunder link below, you'll be helping to put these six episodes in people's ears - and we'd be genuinely grateful. Thank you for listening, and for keeping this going.

RIO CALLING Fundraising Link

Jonathan Blake

And I don't even remember getting back to my flat. My life is over before it's even bigger.

Jim Vogiatzis

I thought it was a death sentence because the majority of people who were diagnosed around that time, you know, within two years they were developing serious illnesses or they were actually dead.

Andgelina Namiba

Many of the people around me were being diagnosed and were being told they had six months to live. And so, of course, I assume that that was my trajectory as well. And also, having watched my brother get ill and die and lots of other people around me. I just knew that that was the way I'm going.

'Jan'

In Turkey, they're not surrounded by these type of discourse or conversations where it's normalised, celebrated, being positive. Maybe they're not even aware that a person can live a full, fulfilling life.

Dan Hall

Dan Hall

This is the waiting room.

Dan Hall

Jonathan Blake

And London is really horny. We would finish shifts, we would go down to heaven to kind of just unwind. And it was, it was great. It was a really great place to be. Little by little, I'm aware that some of I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable and and not for, well, most of my kind of, lymph nodes begin to swell.

Jonathan Blake

I eventually made an appointment to go and see my GP, and I was walking kind of like a gorilla, you know, because these lymph nodes were up under my arms. And so to put my arms by the side was painful. And they were in my groyne as well. So I was kind of walking bandy legged. And as I walked into her room she said, shake my hand, and I shook her hand.

Jonathan Blake

And then I sort of reached out. She felt the lymph node in the crook of my, my right arm. But oh.

Andgelina Namiba

What did you do that.

Jonathan Blake

For? Because it was really painful. And she said, that's the sailors handshake. Whenever the sailors went into port, they would shake the women's or the men's hands that they were going with. And if that lymph node was up, it was a sign of syphilis. So she suggested that I should go and test. And I always used to go to James Pringle House, which was the sexual health clinic of the Middlesex Hospital.

Jonathan Blake

Look was on Charlotte Street. I arrived there and they were just all over me and they wanted to do a biopsy of one of my lymph nodes, and they took and they put me in a psych ward. When they came back, they basically said, you have a virus, there is no cure. You've got between 2 and 9 months to live.

Jonathan Blake

There will, of course, be palliative care when the time comes. And then they said, but you can go home.

Jonathan Blake

I feel like a modern day leper. I isolated myself, I didn't know you know what to do because I realised that I needed to be around people. So I would go off to the bars in the stands, but I would stand in the darkest corner. So I wanted to be with people. I wanted to be around people, but I didn't want to engage because what am I going to do?

Jonathan Blake

Jonathan Blake

All full stay. What could be better? Going to join a stand together around Greenham Common, which was the women's camp and the American air base and Birchfield and all day Marston, which with the two British nuclear establishment. And it said, everybody welcome the little phrase, everybody welcome.

Jonathan Blake

That's what hit me. And I just thought, all right, this is going to be my re-entry into society. I'm going to go down there. I girded my lawn and, and got the tube at Shadwell and came out at Russell Square. And I remember I could see the coach outside Gaithersburg, and I just thought, what the fuck am I doing here?

Jonathan Blake

And I turned on my heel to flee and this voice went. Hello? My name's Nigel. Who are you? And I swung round on my heels and I saw this young man wearing green Wellington boots, crimson and ochre pantaloons, this crimson pair of singlet on this mock of black curly hair. And I just went, Jonathan. And we walked off to the coach together.

Dan Hall

Jim Vogiatzis

I decided to the decision to go to an clinic at James Pringle House and get tested, and back then you were only identified by a number to protect your identity and MSE, even though there were plenty of people in the, waiting area. Who are you? So you would be sitting there giving it your knowing looks, but unable to really say anything to one another.

Jim Vogiatzis

I was working for them London Weekend Television at the time, so I would come to work.

Jim Vogiatzis

Continuing to do what I did every day. Trying to keep open the smiling, friendly face to everybody. You know, you're working very closely with a team. They know you're you know, you're moved in and out. So, you know, people would pick up on when something was wrong. So trying to keep that mask Nasscom for a couple of weeks was also.

Jim Vogiatzis

The tube journey was yeah, tracking. And you kind of reached the clinic waiting for them, calling your number out. And you go in and they would ask you if you would like to speak to a counsellor. So you kind of knew what was coming when you spoke to the doctor. And the first one I'd say they would say you was, I'm really sorry to tell you, but you're HIV positive.

Jim Vogiatzis

I just wanted to leave the clinic as quickly as I possibly could, just as I needed to be outside and have some fresh air and gather my thoughts about what I was going to do next and what I did next. I went back to work. She went straight back to work because I thought, I can is doing and, you know, doing all this, or I can go to work for a couple of hours upon my mind, see something else and think about it later.

Jim Vogiatzis

And then the first person I told strangely, was my boss and my boss. LGBT was a very no nonsense way stand can't who a lot of people down on approachable and one day he Cummings's office and said I noticed something wrong.

Dan Hall

What do you think he noticed was wrong?

Jim Vogiatzis

I just think he noticed that my mood had shifted amongst. I was still being on the side, all smiles and being jolly. He clearly picked up on something like some people do. Of course he goes ahead. Is he going to reject me? Because that's what most HIV and people fear the most is rejection, whether it's from family, from friends or your work colleagues.

Jim Vogiatzis

That's what you fear the most. Rejection. I just blurted out, and this is his straight man. Who, as I say, was quite tough.

Jim Vogiatzis

He just came round this desk. He's on my shoulder and said to me, don't worry, everything's going to be okay. Whatever. We can do, whatever you need. We'll give it to you. And he gave these took by his word.

Dan Hall

Andgelina Namiba

As I was, doing my final exams, I got very ill and so I was in bed for quite a while, and by the time I managed to go to the the GP there, he said, have you looked in the mirror? And I'm like, well, I was very ill looking in the mirror wasn't really a top of my priority.

Andgelina Namiba

So he said, look in the mirror, you know, and you go to the side you there's usually a mirror above the sink. And so I looked in my eye is a completely yellow. So it turns out I had hepatitis B, but then so I finished my exams and came back to London in the family GP in of course, though, the GP had told him about me and he said, oh, you know, it looks like you had the potatoes B that, that, that at a dye.

Andgelina Namiba

And you said that suggests that you have an HIV test. That's how I came to test. It was nothing on my radar. It was quite a shock when he told me, because I think and then I kept quiet. And then he said to me, you've gone quite grey. And I was thinking, well, you've just told me to have an HIV test.

Dan Hall

Dan Hall

Or were you to some extent just, you know, walking into an unknown?

Andgelina Namiba

I honestly hadn't seen any information aimed at me or somebody like me. So I really was walking into an unknown. And I think I remember some of my very early memories of, HIV and Aids as I decoded them is really a very lasting memory. Is, a picture of Freddie Mercury on one of the red tops on the cover of one of the Red tops after he had died.

Andgelina Namiba

And then, of course, also the images I saw in the news was mainly, white gay men getting ill and dying, lots of men dying. So I really didn't see anything about information for me or somebody like me. Around the time.

Dan Hall

So you get the result, which was exactly what you had been fearing, but you were HIV positive. This. What's going through your mind?

Jonathan Blake

Who?

Andgelina Namiba

The thing is, it was, of course, it was scary. I was better prepared for the result, but it was still scary. It was. I was in such fear. But I think a number of things helped me to cope with that because, the first thing was, I knew I had two ways to take these needles right? I could either go on the negative side and go on the, you know, blame way, me negative mode or because I technically knew I had a very short time to leave, I could make the most of the few days I had left, days or months or whatever it was.

Andgelina Namiba

So I chose the latter, which I feel was a really good decision. The other thing that helped me to cope was, a friend of mine at around that time, also, after had been told, you know, came to me and said, Angelina, have something to tell you. And I said, what is it? And she says, I have HIV.

Andgelina Namiba

And I went, yes, finally. And then the woman in London who happens to be my friend and also living with HIV. So then I told her and she took me along to support group. So I received a lot of peer support, which helped me to cope. I got offered the job almost the same week that I got my diagnosis, and I had to make a decision.

Andgelina Namiba

Do I take this job or not? I thought, you know, let me take this job and keep myself busy whilst I'm waiting to die. So my attitude helped me a lot as well. And with hindsight, taking that job was one of the another best decision that I made because working and volunteering has kept me going all these years.

Dan Hall

And now we move very much into the recent past. I asked my Kurdish friend Jan to come onto the show and share his diagnosis story. Living in Turkey and with Covid sweeping the planet, he emerges from a gruesome lockdown, locked in a tiny flat, his prep bottle is empty and an overworked healthcare system cannot afford him more. He seeks human connection and who can blame him?

Dan Hall

Jan is 27 years old and now lives in London. He's come out three times once about his sexuality, once about his ethnicity as a Kurd and now about his HIV status. Due to ongoing stigma that he might face. We disguised his voice in the episode. He's one of the youngest guests that I've featured, diagnosed in an era of effective treatment, and yet he still very much carries the weight of a grief legacy.

'Jan'

I still do feel it's. Very, viscerally, because the very reason my appeals exist is because of and thanks to their death. I know it's a hard combination to say, because often, thanks to. But the reality was this tough time in our modern life and that failure to reckon with HIV very long had to happen for me to be able to be sitting in front of right now, healthy, compliant and no problems being positive.

'Jan'

So yes, I just feel it's the early and viscerally in the everyday. I would like to actually commemorate people who couldn't have access to medication during Covid. Many people suffered from that. Every part of the world. In Africa, air access programs got disrupted. Now they're disbanded. Due to the US government's decision, the lunar more conflict ridden worlds.

'Jan'

Imagine a Ukrainian soldier fighting for his country not having access to HIV medication due to the war. You could you could give many examples of conflict, poverty and international disgrace. And it's still a truth that many people are dying of HIV. If something is given to it can be taken away from you or circumstances can change. I think we should be hyper vigilant to that prospect.

'Jan'

And as gay and policy people, we should not be taking this progress for granted. I often question if equality is the endpoint of our liberation struggle, and I think it is like generations before me, those who have lost loved ones to HIV, they should be really angry now, hearing these complacent discussions.

Dan Hall

May be the perfect way for you to end this episode would be for you just to tell the world, what are these three identities that so much of the world has told you you should be ashamed of?

'Jan'

That I am a Kurdish Turkish person from Turkey. That I am gay. That I am HIV positive.

Dan Hall

And that brings us to the end of this compilation special, The Waiting Room. The full conversations with Jonathan Blake Jim Vogiatzis, Angelina Namiba and 'Jan' are available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and wherever you normally listen to podcasts.

Thank you to Paul Leonidou at unstoppablemonsters.com for his wonderful theme tune, and to Moray Laing for his continued support. Please rate and review the show as it helps to spread the word.

Series three of HIV: The Morning After begins in June, I've been Dan Hall.