When Shirley McGah founded removal company Lesbus in London in the late 1980s, gay and bisexual men in the British capital were in the midst of the AIDS pandemic and very few – if any – firms were willing to help them move home.
Newspapers at the time were awash with phrases such as “gay plague” and there was a widespread belief that AIDS could be spread through any form of contact with those infected.
But McGah was unphased by the widespread fear of AIDS at the time. If someone was sick in the van, “I’d just clean it up,” she told Openly.
McGah, now 72, co-founded Lesbus with her then partner Jayne Moore, but when they split up, Lesbus became Shirley’s Removals.