Memories of Colm
Mary Evans Young and Derek Evans, co-executors of Ó Clúbhán’s estate, remember their late friend and the extraordinary times they shared on Railton Road, Brixton.
Article published by The AIDS Plays Project in February 2025.
Image: Mary Evans Young and Derek Evans.
Aged four, watching his friends play ‘kiss chase’, Colm knew he was different: he wanted to kiss the boys. He left school early and worked at The Simon Community, a homelessness charity in Dublin, to 'do good' and save up to come to London.
He came over in 1973, stayed with a relative in Hertfordshire, found work in a warehouse, and a fortnight later, turned up at an Ice Breakers Tea Party in Brixton, held in the house we shared with our friend and gay activist Gary DeVere. Colm was so overjoyed with the experience he asked, ‘Do I have to leave?’ Gary shrugged, ‘Not if you don’t want to’. Gary was rewarded with a euphoric and fulsome kiss and a chipped front tooth!
Colm was delighted when we told him about squatting. The availability of ‘free’ properties transformed Brixton into a hotbed of political activism. Colm became involved in South London GLF, the squatting group, Claimants’ Union and People’s News Service: a radical alternative to Reuters, etc. He landed a job as a milkman. The early shifts allowed time for political activity and he earned enough to enjoy the gay scene in central London such as the Salisbury in St Martin's Lane, where in 1974, he recognised Terry Stewart, a former Simon Community co-worker. Terry remembers Colm asking, ‘What are you doing here?’ and me replying ‘Wonderful Guinness’. Neither had had any idea the other was gay.
Colm liked his job and flaunted his gay badges - ‘Glad to be Gay’, I’m homosexual too’, etc., and explained what they meant to his bemused customers. Express Dairy was not amused and gave him the sack. Colm protested and leafletted his customers for their support, but in vain.
Colm was a founding member of Brixton Faeries. From clowning around in drag and poking fun at straight society, they evolved with more sophisticated characterisations and plots: ‘Mr Punch’s Nuclear Family’, ’Gents’, and ‘Minehead Revisited’ - a satire on the trial of Jeremy Thorpe.
In 1974 a group of us occupied Centre Point, an office block kept empty for ten years and a potent symbol of property speculation and homelessness. For prosperity, Colm and Gary climbed the 34 flights to boast they’d had sex at the highest point in London.
Colm was conflicted being Irish in England. He was republican; supported the ‘Troops Out’ movement and campaigned to free the Price sisters, on hunger strike in Brixton Prison.
He became increasingly frustrated: feeling he didn’t belong, but not wanting to return to Ireland where homosexuality was still a criminal offence. A letter from his father (a renowned poet and playwright), saying "never darken my door again,” cut deeply.
Following a cycling holiday in Spain, he decided to live in Barcelona. He taught English as a second language, loved the food and gay scene, but he didn’t really fit in (that familiar feeling!) and was lonely. He built a platform bed (as usual) in his tiny flat and spent evenings imagining he had a television and inventing storylines for Coronation Street. He and Mary wrote to each other regularly for four years, aware they were recording something that may be of future interest.
Returning from Barcelona, he moved back into Gary’s, (built another platform bed!) and focussed on his writing. He changed his name from Clifford to the Irish equivalent mvÓ Clúbhán, took a writing course, joined the Theatre Centre and made contact with Gay Sweatshop. In 1985, with his short story, The Flood, he won the Hennessy Award for New Irish Writing. He loved the attention in Dublin’s gay bars after an appearance on RTE. He loved Irish bars full stop: "The craic, the language, the flow…"
Colm died in London Lighthouse of an AIDS-related illness in March 1989, aged 34. He fought in anger to the last and was determined to have the funeral he wanted. He appointed us as Next of Kin and Literary Executors, spent the last few weeks thinking about his funeral, and then gave us his ‘director’s notes’:
Venue - London Lighthouse, encourage people to contribute, the coffin to be draped in the pink cloth pinned with Gay Rights badges that he’d made for Gary’s funeral the year before, Jim MacSweeney and Michael O’Dwyer to play the Nun’s scene from his play Friends of Rio Rita’s and Derek to read a letter he wrote to Mary about his trip to the clap clinic which included a description of the doctor admiring his urine sample, ‘like a glass of fine brandy’.
The coffin would exit to Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye’; afterwards a cèilidh with a live band ("Joanne O’Brien will help sort that…”) and his ashes to be scattered in the Irish Sea, midway between England and Ireland.
It was a remarkable funeral: over two hundred people came to honour Colm, and experienced a roller coaster of tears, laughter, music and dancing. One person sobbed, ”I’ll never have a funeral like this.”