UnTouchableDJ Fat Tony's mother found him unconscious. He was diagnosed that day
DJ Fat Tony shared this about their own health, publicly. Everything below is written in our own words, from the sources listed at the end.
Before you read this
This story describes a life-threatening illness, time in an induced coma, and addiction. Support is listed at the end of the page, and it is there any time.
DJ Fat Tony had been in denial for a long time when his mother came to his house on a Tuesday and found him unconscious on the kitchen floor. She got him to hospital. He tested positive for HIV there and then, and they kept him in. He says he wanted to go home, and did not have the strength to go anywhere.
He was in hospital about four months. By the time he was diagnosed the infection was very far along — he was told he had probably been living with it for around a decade, his viral load was enormous and his T-cell count had fallen below a hundred. He was put in isolation, in a room where staff came in wearing masks. He was also coming off drugs at the same time, which he thinks made the deterioration worse.
The infection reached his brain. After repeated lumbar punctures he became ill enough that doctors put him into an induced coma to bring the swelling down. He was in it for months. He remembers coming round with his mother holding his hand and not understanding what had happened, and being told over time that he had pneumonia and had nearly died.
What he says next is the part that matters most. It did not stop him. He came out of hospital and went straight back to his old life, thinking that since he had not died that time, he would die the next. He says he never dealt with any of it and carried on using because of the shame attached to it — and that he used the word HIV rather than AIDS because it sounded nicer.
Asked how the shame gets smaller, his answer was simply: by talking about it, and making it open. He says he had not discussed it with anyone before he put it in his book.
Nothing here is medical advice. HIV treatment today is very effective, and someone on treatment with an undetectable viral load cannot pass the virus on. Support for anything in this story is listed at the end of the page.
In their own words
One of the sources for this story is an interview with DJ Fat Tony. You can watch it here.
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What this story is about
Where this came from
Every story here is built only from what the person said publicly themselves. These are the sources we used.
From Excess to Empowerment: DJ Fat Tony's Life with AIDS, ADDICTION and Overcoming Adversity
Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin · Podcast
DJ Fat Tony is not affiliated with and has not endorsed UnTouchable.
Published 20 September 2026. Something wrong here? Ask us to correct or remove this story.
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You are not the only one
Other stories about the same conditions.
Beverley Knight · on someone they love
Beverley Knight on Tyrone, and the Christmas she drove him to hospital
Content note — this story covers a subject some people would rather choose when to read.
Beverley Knight met Tyrone in their late twenties, at an R&B night in a London club. He spotted her, wanted her to perform at an event he was booking, and asked for her number. They had lunch the next day and, as she tells it, were inseparable from then until he died. By the time they met he was already a long way into living with HIV, and had been in hospital several times. At Christmas 2002 he became very ill. She noticed his speech slurring and his vision going — he needed glasses, and he began to sound drunk, which she knew he was not. His body seemed to be shutting down. She left her parents over the Christmas period, got in her car and drove him to hospital in west London, where he was admitted. The consultant told them the prognosis was poor. He would not survive it. Treatment might extend his life by a couple of months; without it, he was looking at perhaps a couple of weeks. Tyrone said he did not want treatment. What she says about that is short and unguarded: she had to accept it, and it nearly killed her. She was there when he died — in the next room. He died in 2003. It happened at the same time as she was promoting an album that was being rejected by people she had expected to understand it. She describes facing that without the person she would have leaned on, and everything spiralling from there. Tyrone was not a public figure. He is named here only as she names him, and nothing has been added to what she said. Nothing here is medical advice. HIV treatment today is very effective: someone on treatment with an undetectable viral load cannot pass the virus on. If you want a test, the NHS can arrange one, and results take days at a clinic or minutes with a home kit.
Sarah Hiscox
Sarah Hiscox was eight when a doctor first prescribed her sleeping pills
Content note — this story covers a subject some people would rather choose when to read.
Sarah Hiscox was eight years old, and not sleeping. Her mother took her to the local doctor, and the doctor prescribed Mogadon — a benzodiazepine sleeping tablet strong enough, as she puts it, to knock out a horse. She was a small child. Speaking to Davina McCall, she was clear that she did not go looking for it and her mother did not question it. A doctor had sanctioned it, so it must be all right. In her house, she says, pills were simply everywhere and helping yourself to them was normal, which is part of why none of this struck her as remarkable until she sat down to write a book about her life and started remembering. She was prescribed them for about a fortnight. She notes that current guidance measures courses of sleeping tablets in days rather than weeks, and that two weeks is a long time. When the course finished the nightmares came back. By twelve or thirteen she was taking pills she found in the family bathroom cabinet after school — sitting there, as she describes it, alongside the ordinary contents of any bathroom. She says she was addicted to them by thirteen, and that when they ran out she became physically ill and had no idea why. Nobody had told her that stopping could do that. It did not end there, and she has written about where it went. What she returns to is how early it started, how ordinary it looked from the inside, and how long it took her to see it — which is most of the reason she decided to write any of it down. Nothing here is medical advice. If any of this is familiar, support is listed at the end of this page and none of it will ask you to explain yourself first.