Peter Taylor, eternal optimist. Auckland icon Peter Taylor will be celebrated in a glamorous “This is your life”-style event in August. Organisers the Cartier Trust have announced the event will be held at St Matthew-in-the-City on 31 August. The Trust says it will be about celebrating the “extraordinary life of community superstar Peter Taylor.” The former owner of much-loved Auckland bars Surrender Dorothy, Dot’s Sister and Dot’s is also an HIV awareness campaigner and former globe-trotting equestrian rider and mentor. He infamously survived a bite from a Spanish sandfly in the mid-90s, which infected him leishmaniasis donovani, a bone marrow destroying disease. A younger Peter Taylor He is the only person in the world living with both leishmaniasis and HIV, and in a dozen years has clocked up around 650 doses of chemotherapy. The treatment has left him severely deaf and with only 10% of his vision. “I've kind of moved on from the whole ‘I'm supposed to be dead' stuff,” the eternal optimist told us 2007. Taylor is also a massage therapist, a writer, sometimes public speaker and drag identity. He has been with his partner Rodney since 2006. Ticket details for the Cartier tribute event will be released soon.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 14th June 2013 - 12:28pm