Paddy Chew

At the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2015, artist Zihan Loo presented With/Out, a performance installation based on Chew's monologue Completely With/Out Character. Loo told The Straits Times: "As a queer person, I have always been inspired by Paddy's strength and fortitude. I often wonder, if I was put in his position, whether I would have the courage to step out like he did." With/Out also featured the first public screening of taped performances from three evenings of Completely With/Out Character.

In 1998 he began working on a one-man autobiographical play called Completely With/Out Character, his debut effort. The final version was produced by The Necessary Stage, written by Haresh Sharma, directed by Alvin Tan and staged at The Drama Centre from 10–17 May 1999. At the end of each performance, Chew would strip to his shorts and raise his arms to allow the audience to take in his emaciated frame. This was followed by a frank question and answer session. All proceeds from the play were donated to the charity organisation for which he was an outspoken volunteer, Action for AIDS (AfA). Reviewing the play in The Straits Times, poet and playwright Alfian Sa'at called Completely With/Out Character "the most extreme form of docu-theatre", writing, "The audience was given the privilege of witnessing a play, which, like its subject, was too aware of its ephemeral existence".

Chew dreamed aloud of writing a book and taking a last holiday in Europe, but his last wishes were not to be. His health deteriorated rapidly, necessitating his admission to the Communicable Disease Centre (CDC) in Moulmein Road in June 1999, 2 months before his death.

Chew died at the CDC from complications of HIV infection at 6:15 a.m. on 21 August 1999, three months after his play's run ended.

On 12 December 1998 during the First National AIDS Conference in Singapore, Chew became the first Singaporean AIDS patient to publicly declare his disease, but he was not the first AIDS patient in Singapore. The first was his colleague, a flight steward of mixed parentage. He declared himself bisexual but had yet to identify a woman who had slept with him.

After his diagnosis he was relieved to know what was wrong. He travelled to Brussels to begin receiving treatment unavailable in Singapore at the time, but by 1996 he had lost 45% of his weight and his health was failing rapidly.

Action for Aids president, Assoc. Prof. Roy Chan, who knew Chew since he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1995 and who worked closely with him on several AIDS awareness projects, said: "Paddy was a very outspoken person. He had a lot of guts to do what he did. He was selfless and courageous. He did not do it for himself, but for society."

Chew was not aware of AIDS or HIV during the first half of his career as a flight attendant, and never used a condom. He began practising safe sex after hearing of the disease in 1986 or '87, but fell ill in 1995, two years after leaving Singapore Airlines. His hospital caretakers were inexperienced with his condition, failing to recognise his oral thrush until he made the diagnosis. He was put through a series of standard medical tests before being administered an HIV test at his request, to the reluctance of his doctors.

Paddy Chew (simplified Chinese: 周丰林 ; traditional Chinese: 周豐林 ; pinyin: Zhōu Fēng Lín ; 29 March 1960 – 21 August 1999) was the first Singaporean person with HIV/AIDS to come out to the general public.