He was brought up as a Roman Catholic in Accrington, Lancashire. He had five brothers and two sisters. During his teens he wore make-up and extravagant clothes.
His first sexual encounter was with a girl when he was 16. It was only when he was about 18 that he started having sex with other boys. At the age of 18 he took a job in the Marshall Ward call centre in Manchester but got the sack after a few weeks.
He fled from Manchester to go to art College in Brighton.
It was in Brighton when he first had sex as a prostitute at the age of 22. He began prostitution in collaboration with his fellow art student and flatmate Mark.
Although he was in debt, the prostitution was not only about money, but was also seen as an art project, and he and Mark wrote about it and referred to it in performances.
Aiden Shaw went to Los Angeles, USA, and worked with the porn film director ChiChi LaRue. In 1995 he posed for Pierre et Gilles who put an image of him in their work Midnight Cowboy.
On Easter Sunday in April 1998 he was in a serious car accident in Brussels, Belgium, and went into a coma. His left femur was broken, his liver was punctured, the left side of his scalp and ear were torn off, and he had a brain lesion. After he returned to Britain he took some time to recover and was paralysed down one side for a while.
Source: excerpts from: The Knitting Circle, U.K. - http://www.sbu.ac.uk/stafflag/people.html
