Self-proclaimed ‘Catholic faggot’ Christopher Mary Pius Kirk was a Cumbrian pioneer. Born on 6th of December, 1950, Kirk had a tumultuous upbringing in Carlisle before going on to study American Literature at the University of Nottingham in 1970 at the age of nineteen.

There, he founded the city’s Gay Liberation Front and began organising radical street theatre, including the drag-packed “Robina Hood and her Gay Folk”, in which he played Maid Marian.

By all accounts, the Nottingham GLF was Kris Kirk. He and the group would organise impromptu queer demonstrations which they called “zaps”. These involved donning outrageous costumes and handing out leaflets. A member of the group recalls “zapping” the London Palladium, where they stormed the stage to disrupt a Larry Grayson performance, and travelling to Essex to sing Christmas carols outside the house of hard-line Christian conservative Mary Whitehouse, who brought a charge of ‘blasphemous libel’ against Gay News in 1977.

When Kirk left Nottingham for London in the early 1980s, the GLF faded rapidly. Kirk turned his hand instead to journalism, beginning to write for Gay News, Gay Times, Melody Maker and Smash Hits under the name ‘Kris Kirk’. In doing so, he became the first openly gay music journalist in the UK, and found himself interviewing queer icons such as Boy George, Bronski Beat and The Pet Shop Boys.

Around this time, Kirk met his partner Ed Heath. In 1984, the pair co-wrote Men In Frocks, described at the time by Gay Men’s Press as ‘the book on modern drag.’

Kirk and Heath moved to rural Wales in 1988, where they opened a secondhand bookshop. Their quiet life was soon disrupted, though, when Kirk was diagnosed with AIDS.

He periodically returned to London for treatment, but began to go blind in 1992. That year, Kirk penned ‘Descent into Darkness’, an article for Gay Times in which he candidly discussed his condition at a time when very few people with AIDS ‘went public.’

In it, Kirk wrote: “As long as I have my friends, my family, my fags, my coffee, my opera tapes and my writing I guess I shall tootle along, even though I may not have all my coat buttons done up properly. Life is for living and I am trying to live it as well as I can. But I suppose that I feel that when death finally comes I shall be ready for it. Perhaps that is what life is all about.”

Kirk died on 27th April 1993 at the age of forty two.

He is survived by his partner Ed Heath, who is alive and well and still lives in rural Wales.

Heath appears alongside Kirk and his lifelong best friend Julia Reid in A Boy Called Mary (1986); a made-for-TV film written by Kirk in which he muses on his humble Cumbrian upbringing, the nature of ‘camp’, and his illustrious career.

The film features scenes shot on the Carlisle’s West Walls, the now demolished Lonsdale Cinema, and the bar at Carlisle Station Hotel, where Kirk fictionalises a scene in which his younger self and Reid pray to God to “Deliver us from Carlisle forever and ever. Amen.”

After discovering A Boy Called Mary earlier this year I was desperate to know more about Kirk and his life. So I spent weeks attempting to find and contact Julia Reid. The search involved local Facebook groups and internet sleuthing, but I finally got a phone call out of the blue one day; Julia had heard I was looking for her and had been passed my number. I was ecstatic to finally get the chance to talk to her, and since then I’m glad to say we’ve become friends.

Now retired and focussing on her work as a King Lear Prize-nominated fine artist, Julia lives in Liverpool, but still has family in Cumbria and regularly visits Carlisle. I sat down with her to talk all things Carlisle, queer and Kris Kirk:

SA: So how did you and Kris meet?

JR: We met in 1955, at the beginning of September. The first day of infant school. We were four years old, and the pair of us were the only two in the class who cried. And we cried for three weeks. [She laughs.]

SA: You became fast friends then?

JR: Right away. His Mam and Dad had the off license on South Street and I only lived down the road, so it was marvellous. And we always talked a lot, y’know? He would tell me about his parents’ rows. And I would tell him about mine. We used to talk about quite personal stuff right from the beginning. And then we came out to each other when we were about twelve. The funny thing is people used to think we would get married!

SA: What would you do for fun when you were kids?

JR: We loved the cinema. We’d go at least once a week. And he’s always bring a box of chocolates or something. And I think when we were about fifteen he confessed that he’d be nicking the chocolates from his Dad’s shop!

SA: How would you describe Kris to those who never got the chance to meet him?

JR: He was a very physical, loving kind of bloke. When we were older and lived apart, I’d still see him all the time and he would always bring flowers. I remember when I was twenty six, in Liverpool, I was sexually assaulted. And Kris was on the next train from London. Anyway, we were in the same class all the way through school. And this always sticks in my mind, but sometimes in an exam we used to cheat together. Not like mega cheating, just telling each other answers and that, y’know? And this time, the teacher – who Kris fucking hated – said something to him. And he said back, “Well Sir, fine words butter no parsnips.”

SA: He always had a way with words then?

JR: He did. And he was always an avid reader. By the time we left junior school he’d read all the Billy Bunter books. All of them. He was a speed reader.

SA: And he loved music as well?

JR: Honestly, I used to think ‘how what the hell is he gonna pass any exams?’ Because all he was interested in was music. And he went into everything like a blooming nit nurse. Anything current. He was an encyclopaedia of pop music. And he had a vast record collection, even when he sixteen. And they were all immaculate. We used to go to Roberts record shop and he couldn’t come out without buying at least at least an album and a couple of singles. Sometimes, though, we used to just go and gaze in the window at photographs of people that we quite fancied.

SA: Who was it you both fancied?

JR: He’d hate me to say it, but he quite fancied the look of Elton John when he was younger! But only when he was younger. And I fancied Andy Williams’ wife, I can’t remember her name. [SA: Claudine Longet]

SA: What was Carlisle generally like for queer people at that time?

JR: Well I went to St. Gabriel’s for the Sixth Form and Kris went to Austin Friars. But he was queer bashed there. In the boys’ toilets, y’know. God it was awful. I think he was quite traumatised, but he said “I’m not apologising for anything,” and he went in the next day. I don’t even know if he grassed anyone up. But there was always a scene going on, y’know? And it was kind of thriving in a way, but just under the surface. Although I’d say it was about 70% blokes. But if you wanted a proper gay night out, you went over to Newcastle or to the Rococo in Sunderland, because there wasn’t much nightlife in Carlisle full stop. I remember this time Kris put loads of makeup on, and I put a moustache on, and we walked into town. We wanted to shock people, but not one person looked twice at us. Which is bonkers for Carlisle. You’d have thought as least somebody would have thrown a stone at us. [She laughs.]

SA: Were there any gay friendly places in Carlisle at all?

JR: There was The Witness Box, which was the bar in the County
Hotel. [SA: Now known as Carlisle Station Hotel – not to be
confused with the new County Hotel on Botchergate.] We used to
go there quite a lot. But again that would be about 90% blokes.
Which was alright. At least you could relax! But there’d be parties
and that. At people’s houses. Aye, there was always parties. Every
weekend.

SA: When did you and Kris leave Carlisle?

JR: Well he stayed on an extra year because I was right. He’d been
that interested in pop music that he had to repeat a year. [She
laughs.] He went to Nottingham and I went to Liverpool.

SA: What did it mean to him to have then built such an illustrious
career interviewing all these pop stars?

JR: Well you see he had so much background information,
because he’d been researching things since he was about
fourteen. So he had a vast knowledge of everyone. So he knew the
relevant questions to ask them, y’know, the interesting questions.
And he loved it because he just loved pop music, y’know. So he
was totally in his element. Totally.

SA: When did you find out that Kris had AIDS?

JR: Four years before he died. 1989. I remember Ed actually
phoned to tell me. I was in the hall and… [She pauses.] God. It was
awful. Because he’d had this fungal nail infection. And he went to
go and get it sorted. And then… [She pauses.] He was shocked with
the diagnosis. Because he wasn’t a real promiscuous bloke. That’s
what I always thought was a bit ironic. I don’t mean he was
celibate. Of course he wasn’t. But he wasn’t, like, a shagger,
y’know. But d’you know what? He was so bloody positive. And he
was really inspiring to people. Even when he went blind, which
was the worst thing for him because he was such a reader, he used
to go to the cinema and the theatre, y’know. And when he started
to learn braille he said, “I know I won’t learn a lot of his but I’m
having a go.”

He did laugh this one time. He said he was standing outside a shop
waiting for his Mam, and he’d taken his hat off for some reason,
and someone came over and started giving him money! [She
laughs.]

SA: And how did you deal with his illness at the time?

JR: Christ. Oh my God almighty… [She pauses.] But, you see, after
he’d been in and out of hospital he’d kind of plateaued. We knew
we had AIDS. We knew it wasn’t curable. But it got to the point
where he was just pootling along. And ok, something else would
happen. And then something else would happen. And then… [She
takes a moment.] I mean, obviously we expected him to die. But…
It was just such a shock, y’know, when he did… [She takes another
moment.]

SA: So it really came out of nowhere?

JR: Aye… And, I know Ed still misses him. I still miss him. His
friends still miss him… And I’m not saying he was a saint, but… He
really was just a good bloke. He was a lovely bloke.

SA: What do you this Kris’ legacy is.

JR: I know I do get upset sometimes when I’m talking about him,
but… And this sounds frivolous, and I don’t mean it to… But he was
a bloody good laugh. And you know what? He had this gift, I think,
for making the other person feel really loved and cherished. But
he was a pioneer for Carlisle. In a time when it wasn’t easy to be.
He was brave. He was a brave lad.

Author bio:

Stuart Armstrong is a Carlisle-born screenwriter and film director.
His BAFTA qualifying, Cumbria-set queer short film Meat Raffle
(2025) is currently available to stream on Channel 4.

IG: @stuarttarmstrong