The Repair Shop star opens up on friends deaths in | UK News

The Repair Shop’s Lucia Scalisi has opened up about the heartbreak of dropping friends to HIV.

In the latest instalment of the beloved BBC sequence, which follows specialists as they restore cherished belongings, bookbinder Chris Shaw was tasked with repairing “a fragile but groundbreaking piece of British social history” — the unique logbook from Gay Switchboard, experiences Manchester Evening News.

Established in 1974, the helpline was based at a time when homosexual people in the UK had no legal safety, with the logbook documenting calls from people in search of steering and assist.

As Chris set about his restoration work, fellow professional Lucia told him it was “fascinating” to see the kinds of issues written in the e book. “To me, it is really quite close to my heart, this because a lot of my friends died, particularly in the 80s,” said the TV star. “From HIV. And it’s as relevant today as it was, what, 40 years ago, 50 years ago,” she added.

The logbook was introduced to The Repair Shop’s barn by Lisa Power, one of the helpline’s earliest volunteers, who described it as a “lifeline” for numerous people at the time.

“What you’ve got to remember is that in the 1970s, there was no legal protection for gay people,” she said. “People were isolated. They knew that there were other people out there, but they didn’t know how to reach them. And that’s where Switchboard came in. It’s still around today. It’s now called Switchboard LGBT.

“And it has been taking telephone calls and now all other varieties of messages and conversations for over 50 years. Someone could have written in the logbook for that time something that may be of use to the volunteers.”

She continued: “The logbooks had been sort of half diary but also half survival information. It was instructions for us to help us deal with the calls better. You’ll discover simple, helpful info. And people needed to know info. There was no web or something like that.”

“It completely was a lifeline,” Lisa said. “Sometimes they needed help, legal help, because you might be sacked for being homosexual. If you got here out after you had been married and had youngsters, you wouldn’t just lose custody of those youngsters. You may really lose any access to them at all because they had been afraid that someway you’d infect the youngsters with your gayness.”

“It’s surprising,” expert Chris remarked, as Lisa told him: “You’d start to also get the calls from people who’d told their mother and father they had been homosexual and had been saying, ‘I’ve just been chucked out. Where can I am going?’ But it was actually important we had been there for them.”

“It was the powerhouse behind the early HIV info,” she said of the well-worn book, which was frayed and in need of a new spine. “I’d end a call with, ‘Have you heard about AIDS?’ And a lot of people hadn’t. So we had been spreading the data. And actually, I consider we saved 1000’s upon 1000’s of lives.”

“It’s actually fairly unimaginable what Lisa and the helpline have achieved,” Chris said as he embarked on the painstaking task. “Incredible people, decided, in a climate that was clearly fairly aggressive in the direction of that facet of the group, to say the least.

“And every entry is someone they have helped. This book is so important to repair because it’s the start of the helpline.”

You can contact Switchboard LGBT by calling 0800 0119100 or emailing good day@switchboard.lgbt

The Repair Shop airs on BBC One.