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‘HIV was like having a bell round my neck’: Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer on Aids, his BBC ban and Relax

By Jonathan Dean
The Times·
15 mins to read

The Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer survived being gay in 1970s Liverpool, a BBC ban and an HIV diagnosis. Now, 40 years after he first told us to Relax, his life is being made into a film.

Holly Johnson was told he was HIV positive just weeks before Freddie Mercury died. It was October 1991 and Johnson, the singer in Frankie Goes to Hollywood — brash, extrovert, full of life — was terrified. He had bumps, lesions. He had a

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