This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1800 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing.

There is a detailed Index arranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc. There is also a Place Index arranged by City etc. This is still evolving.

In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!

Showing posts with label Press For Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Press For Change. Show all posts

16 September 2018

On Reading Christine Burns’ History of Trans Britain: Introduction

Part I: Introduction
Part II: 1950-1980
Part III: 1980-2004
Annotated reading list for English trans history.


Introduction


  • Christine Burns. “Introduction”. In Christine Burns (ed) Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows. Unbound, 2018: 1-18.
Trans Britain was released in the UK in January 2018, and in Australia in February 2018. It is being  released in Canada and the US in September 2018. It is also available worldwide from Book Depository.

There are not many histories of British trans people, so all additions are welcome, whatever their emphasis or selections of facts. In the new anthology, Trans Britain edited by herself, Christine Burns, includes an introduction to the book, and introductory chapters to each of the three sections, that together constitute a history of the topic.

Despite the word ‘Britain’ in the title of the book, almost all that follows applies to England only. The anthology, Trans Britain, does include a chapter on Scottish trans activism by James Morton, but in Burns’ history chapters the only Scottish mention is of Ewan Forbes.

I don’t know why Burns has to start by listing trans persons and events in the US. They are well known, and surely the reader is coming to this book for a discussion on British or at least English trans persons and events.

The Introduction is more of a run around the world mentioning various trans cultures and events. A lot of the content is well-known: D’Eon, Hirschfeld, Mark Weston, Michael Dillon, Ewan Forbes.


However, I too have been researching British trans history, and there are, unfortunately, significant discrepancies between our respective accounts.  I mention them here so that future historian will combine the best of both.

➤Burns mentions the English historian Peter Ackroyd’s 1979 book, Dressing Up (review), but only to say that he quotes somebody else on the North American two-spirit tradition – and then neither this book nor Ackroyd’s Queer City (review) are mentioned again. Surely she must have found much else of relevance in the two books.

➤She repeats the misinformation that d’Eon “infiltrated the court of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia as a woman” – surely Gary Kates’ 1995 book (the first book based on the previously ignored d’Eon archives in the University of Leeds Library) refuted that canard once and for all.

➤Two pages later she repeats the extremely popular but totally false notion that Magnus Hirschfeld coined the word ‘transvestism’ - how many times does this have to be refuted before writers pay attention?!

➤After talking of pioneering surgical techniques at Hirschfeld’s institute, Burns then totally ignores the successful surgeries on Hirschfeld’s patients (Charlotte Charlaque who was still alive in New York in 1952; Toni Ebel who lived until 1961 in East Germany; Dörchen Ritcher who was probably murdered by Nazis in 1933) and mentions only the unsuccessful surgery on Lili Elvenes (whom she still calls Lili Elbe) who of course was not a patient of Hirschfeld.

➤Burns correctly makes the point that Alan Hart in Oregon had surgery in 1917, before Hirschfeld’s patients, but says nothing about Karl Baer who had surgery in Berlin in 1906.

➤Burns mentions Liz Hodgkinson’s biography of Michael Dillon, Michael Née Laura, only by its reissue title From a Girl to a Man.

➤Most of the English persons mentioned in the period before 1950 are trans men. It is a shame that she did not mention trans woman Norma Jackson who was famously in the newspapers in 1931. It is obvious to modern readers that she was a transsexual, but unable to get any medical assistance.

➤Nor is there any mention of Mark Weston’s surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital, Lennox Broster. While Broster in the 1930s and 1940s declined to operate on any trans person who was not also intersex, he did pioneer genital surgery at Charing Cross, and his clinic was inherited by John Randell.
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21 January 2016

Sonia Burgess (1947 – 2010) lawyer

David Burgess was born in Castleford, West Yorkshire. His mother was a secondary-school headmistress, but he never knew his father. He went to boarding school in Skipton, and then to Cambridge University where he met Robert Winstanley and gained an upper second in law in 1969. He was already openly bisexual.

In 1975 Winstanley Burgess Solicitors opened in offices above a pizza restaurant opposite Islington Town Hall. Burgess had already been doing voluntary work for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, and rapidly began to build his reputation in immigration law, working especially with Tamil and Kurd refugees, and the firm moved to larger offices.

Stephen Whittle describes a visit:
“I had expected a London lawyer to work in a fancy building, with polished furniture, and rich carpets. Instead I entered a dark, dingy, decaying building on the East London Road, where dirty magnolia woodchip papered stud wall partitions, with holes where they had been torn and kicked in frustration by the firm’s clients, and which looked as if they would collapse at any moment. Inside that den of iniquity, there seemed to be hundreds of grey people hanging out, hoping for a bob or two, or a cup of tea whilst they waited for the British Government to decide on their lives. Rarely did money change hands. Sonia, supported by her legal partner Robert Winstanley and backed by an army of pro-bono law students, mostly gave away her services.”
By this time Burgess was experimenting in going out as Sonia. For a while he had a relationship with a Chinese man, whom he took home to Castleford.

In 1979 Burgess acted on behalf of Mark Rees so that he could change his legal gender. This was taken as far as the European Court of Human Right (ECHR) in 1986, but his petition was finally denied.

In 1985 David married a Tibetan refugee who worked as a nurse. They had two children, and adopted the wife's 7-year-old niece. The wife knew of and accepted that David was also Sonia.

In 1987 a group of 52 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers were refused entry on arrival at the UK border. Burgess intervened to stop their deportation, using the only in-country legal remedy then available, a judicial review of the decision to reject the asylum claim. Burgess won the case in the court of appeal, but lost in the House of Lords, and the men were returned to Sri Lanka. The next year Burgess and a colleague travelled to Sri Lanka, traced the 52 men and documented the ill-treatment they had suffered since their return. This permitted an out-of-country appeal and the men were subsequently accepted as refugees and allowed into the UK. Burgess did lose this case when it reached the ECHR in 1991, but the case highlighted the inadequacy of judicial review being the only in-country challenge to a refusal of entry, and the law was later changed.

Burgess represented the Sri Lankan Viraj Mendis who sought sanctuary in the Church of the Ascension in Hulme, Manchester, before being deported in 1989.

In 1991 a Tibetan official who was visiting London as part of a Chinese delegation decided to defect and Burgess provided accommodation for several weeks until asylum was granted.

The same year, Burgess was brought in at the last moment in the case of M, a teacher from Zaire, who was actually on a plane at Heathrow and about to be deported. Burgess filed a new asylum application and understood that he had received an undertaking from the government solicitor that deportation would be stayed. Officials phoned Heathrow, but were put through to the wrong terminal, and M was flown to Zaire. On discovering this, Burgess phoned the judge at home at midnight, who ordered that arrangements be made to fly M back to the UK. However the Conservative Home Secretary Kenneth Baker interfered to cancel the arrangements. At this point M disappeared, probably fleeing to another African country. Burgess began contempt of court proceedings against the Home Secretary and pursued the case to the House of Lords, which ruled against the government. Baker was spared a fine, but was ordered to pay costs.
“It would be a black day for the rule of law and the liberty of the subject if ministers were not accountable to the courts for their personal actions”.
This has been described as the most significant constitutional case for 200 years in that no previous serving minister had been so chastised. In the House of Commons, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP for Islington North, and future leader of the Labour Party, criticized the Home Secretary for putting M's life at risk.

After the transsexual action group, Press For Change, was founded in 1992, Burgess acted as their solicitor.

However Burgess was first and foremost a human rights lawyer, and if she had transitioned at that time would have lost credibility and career.

In 1992 Burgess acted on behalf of Stephen Whittle's eldest child, referred to as 'Z' and argued that Stephen should be on her birth certificate as 'parent'. This took four years to get to the ECHR, and although they technically lost, the ECHR did recognise Stephen, his wife and children as a family.

In 1996 Burgess' partner, Robert Winstanley, who had specialised in criminal defence work, was made a judge. They parted on good terms, but Winstanley had been the more business oriented, and his departure coincided with government changes to legal aid that required more documentation that Burgess found irksome.

In that year Burgess acted for Karamjit Singh Chahal, an alleged Sikh militant facing deportation to India, where he claimed he would be at risk of torture. Burgess travelled to India and collected four volumes of cogent evidence, while the Attorney General had only a thin file of press cuttings. The ECHR ruled against deportation, that the risk of torture is absolute, even for those who may pose a security risk to the UK. This precedent prevented the deportation of accused terrorists rounded up after 9/11.

While David and wife had kept the existence of Sonia from the children, one night in a restaurant with another trans woman, Sonia realised that she had been recognised by another parent from her son's school. She forced herself to tell the son, and got the reaction:
“I thought you were really the most boring person I had ever known, thank god there is something interesting at last”.
After that the family was open and both as Sonia and David she was accepted. Sonia semi-transitioned in the early 2000s. By that time she was able to work part time, and was recognised by the courts as an expert in immigration law. Her appearance had become androgynous, and many lawyers and judges knew of her as Sonia.

However the firm was in financial problems and her back was giving her a bad time. The firm folded in 2003. Burgess was burned out from years of representing clients traumatised by rape and torture, and by the political and media abuse heaped on asylum seekers. He spent time in Tibet learning the language. After returning to the UK Mr and Mrs Burgess agreed to separate, and in 2008 they were divorced. A flat was found in Cambridge Circus, on the edge of Soho, where Sonia could be herself, and was considering facial surgery and breast implants.
Sonia

Burgess did not stay away from refugee work, and began working for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and also for a law firm in north London, where her Sonia identity was an open secret.

Sonia met 34-year-old Nina (Senthooran) Kanagasingham, probably in a nightclub.. Nina was a trans asylum seeker from Sri Lanka who had been in the UK since 2000. On 25 October 2010 they were at Kings Cross tube station, after visiting Nina's doctor, when Tina, probably in despair at the inhumane immigration system, lashed out and Sonia was under the train.

Sonia's funeral was held at St Martin-in-the Fields, Trafalgar Square on 17 November, attended by around 600 persons, a mixture of lawyers, former asylum seekers and trans persons. The three children delivered a eulogy about the father they had known, slipping easily between female and male pronouns.

Kanagasingham was charged with murder, and remanded in Wandsworth men's prison.

Kanagasingham pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility because of schizophrenia, and chose to be referred to as a man and by his male name during the trial. He was sentenced to life, and to serve a minimum of seven years.

He was sent to Belmarsh men's prison – one of the first trans prisoners to be housed in defiance of the New prison Guidelines of 2011, which said that those living as female should be sent to a woman's prison. In February 2015, he was found dead in his cell with a plastic bag around his head, and hands tied to the bed. At the inquest, nearby prisoners reported hearing cries for help.


 * David Burgess is apparently a common name for lawyers. Google brings up such in various English-speaking cities. There is a book, Fighting for Social Justice: The Life Story of David Burgess, but it is about the US labour activist.
EN.Wikipedia
______________________________________

Sheila Jeffreys, in her 2014 book, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism, p160-1, uses this case of all cases to raise alarm that Kanagasingham might be placed in a woman's prison.

The Evening Standard has two articles from February 2015 re the then ongoing inquest into Senthooran Kanagasingham's death, but I could not find any articles in the Standard or elsewhere re the conclusion of the inquest.
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20 May 2014

Mark Rees Part II: activist, councillor.

Continued from Part I.

The refusal from the Church of England spurred Mark to consider a challenge through the legal system. A friend told him of Daniel van Oosterwijck who had applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the same issue. In 1979 he found a lawyer, David Sonia Burgess (1947 – 2010), also transgender, who would take the case.

In 1981 Mark chastised a local boy for breaking glass close to his house. In revenge the boy's mother put out the word about Mark's gender history and he was then continuously taunted by local kids. Another disappointment in this period was that Mark's younger sister, Jane, who had been initially supportive of his transition, turned against it in 1984, and even cut herself off from their mother.

That same year Mark wrote to the BBC's Claire Rayner's Casebook, and suggested that they do a program on transsexuality. The film crew came to Mark's home for the interview, but did not give his full name or whereabouts on the air.

Mark and David Burgess had been appealing through the courts and finally the ECHR decided that there was a case. Supposedly Mark's identity was to be confidential, but in April 1985 the ECHR issued a press release giving Mark's full name, and it was reprinted in The Guardian. This was quickly picked up by a local newspaper.

The ECHR hearing was held in 1986. Eleven days before, Mark and his mother were featured on BBC 1 Nine O'Clock News, and on Woman's Hour. The Thatcher government sent expensive lawyers to argue against Mark's petition, and it was denied. However, on the day that the ECHR's decision was handed down, Mark received a letter from the Liberal MP and barrister Alex Carlile expressing support. He was also invited to the Tunbridge Wells Civic Banquet by the incoming mayor.

In Liz Hodgkinson's 1987 book, Bodyshock, Mark explained:
"Sometimes I think  that I should know all about cars, now that I'm supposed to be a man, but many of my male friends don't understand mechanical things. I don't feel that it is essential at all. I see myself as an ideal person in the middle. Having been a woman, and having grown up, albeit reluctantly, in a woman's world, I find that my sympathies are with women. I find many men boring and pompous. I prefer to listen to women, and feel I know all about them, having been one. Everybody knows about me and I don't try to hide my background as many female-to-male transsexuals do."
In 1988 Mark encountered his sister's two daughters in town and said 'Hello'. A solicitor's letter letter came three days later demanding that he not attempt to see the children. Following this their mother went to visit a friend in Somerset, and died. A cousin from South Africa turned up for the funeral, who was also a female-to-male transsexual. Jane came but refused to sit with or even look at her brother. The local yobos jeered as Mark followed his mother's coffin. Later in the year a memorial service was held, without Jane being invited.

Mark fell into depression and stopped attending church. In 1989 Wendy Cooper got Wales On Sunday to commission a life history from Mark, and in June he went to Brussels as the European Parliament had accepted a motion that transsexuals be legally recognised. The motion was passed in September, but, as expected, the Thatcher government totally ignored it. On the trip Mark met with Pastor Joseph Doucé, a year before he was assassinated.

Mark started on a career as a public speaker, mainly to the Samaritans charity. Financially he was still relying on the dole. Alex Carlile organized a meeting of transsexuals and supporters in 1992 that started in his office and finished in a nearby café. This resulted in the foundation of Press for Change(PFC). Mark was happy to let the younger, and computer literate, do most of the work, but continued to write letters , especially to Anglican dioceses, and spoke at many meetings across the UK.

In 1994 Mark was elected to the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council representing the Liberal Democrat Party, one of the first openly trans candidates to be elected. However it resulted in an ill-mannered article in The News of the World. Nonetheless the local paper published a photograph of Councillor Rees a few weeks later with no mention at all of his gender history.

In 1996 Cassell published Mark's biography with a foreword by the Dutch professor Louis J Gooren and a preface by Alex Carlile.

In 2002, Mark turned 60, and being legally a woman was able to start drawing a state pension.

The Gender Recognition Act which PFC had campaigned for, came into effect in 2004, despite fierce opposition from the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Institute. In July Mark had a letter published in The Church Times.
"It has been my hope that it might be possible to organise a service to give thanks for the passing of the Act, and to include penitence and reconciliation; but this has met with considerable antagonism from some colleagues, solely because of the bishops’ opposition. I wonder if there is any serving bishop who would have courage enough to say, 'On behalf of the Church, I am sorry for the hurt we have caused you'."
This generated enough response that an event, “The Gender Recognition Act 2004, Reflection and
Thanksgiving,” was held in St Anne’s Church, Soho, London, on 21 May 2005. Mark's local vicar in Tunbridge Wells came and preached a sermon against Christians who would not show love. Ironically, within the preceding week the Act had been amended by a Statutory Instrument in order to accommodate the objections of the fundamentalists. As a result they have the right to check on anyone who they might suspect to be transgender. If the individual is so, these religious people are permitted by law to refuse him or her employment, accommodation or even entry to worship.

By now Mark considered himself to be agnostic, and no longer attended church. He did however take a diploma course in applied theology. After the priest tutor mentioned that her church organist was transgender, Mark outed himself to the tutor and then the class. This went well and several wanted to read his biography which was by then out of print. This led to Mark expanding the book and adding photographs. The new publication in 2009 was at his own expense.

He finally registered as male under the Gender Recognition Act as an act of closure in completing the revision of the book.

Mark died age 81 in 2023.

*not the footballer, nor the neuroscience professor
  • European Commission of Human Rights. Mark Rees against the United Kingdom: Report. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1984.
  • Terence Shaw.  "Sex Change Rights Plea to Court".  The Daily Telegraph, 17 Mar 1986. 
  • Liz Hodgkinson,. Bodyshock: the truth about changing sex. London: Columbus, 1987:136, 140-3.
  • Jane Jackson (dir). Sex Change - Shock! Horror! Probe. Scr: Kristiene Clarke, with Mark Rees and others. UK TV Channel 4 50 mins 1989.
  • Mark Rees. "Becoming a man: The personal account of a Female-to-Male Transsexual". In Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. London & New York: Routledge 1996: 27-38.
  • Mark Rees. Dear Sir or Madam: the autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual. London & New York: Cassell, 1996. Revised as Dear Sir or Madam: A Journey from Female to Male. Tunbridge Wells: Mallard, 2009.
  • Sophie Goodman.  "New hope for transsexuals as MPs move to change the law on birth certificates". The Independent, 23 June 2002.  www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/new-hope-for-transsexuals-as-mps-move-to-change-the-law-on-birth-certificates-646151.html
  • Pat Califia. Sex changes : the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 178-186.
  • Judith Halberstam. Female Masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.155-6
  • Mark Rees. "Reproaching opponents of Gender Recognition Act". Church Times, 02 Nov 2006. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2004/30-july/comment/letters-to-the-editor/reproaching-opponents-of-gender-recognition-act.
  • Christine Burns. "Dear Sir or Madam – The New Edition". Just Plain Sense, October 4, 2009. http://blog.plain-sense.co.uk/2009/10/dear-sir-or-madam-new-edition.html.
  • Mark Dalby. "Book Review: Mark Rees, Dear Sir or Madam: A Journey from Female to Male". Modern Church, Jan 2010. www.modernchurch.org.uk/publications/st/jan2010/3.htm.
  • Christine Burns.  Pressing Matters, Volume 1.   Kindle, 2013. 
LGBThistorymonth     LGBTran

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The second self-published autobiography came out in 2009 as the original was by then out of print.   The irony is that now it is fairly easy to buy a copy of the 1996 book on Amazon Marketplace or AbeBooks, but it is very difficult to find a copy of the 2009 version.
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22 July 2010

Lynne Janine Braithwaite (1934 - 2008) Flight Sergeant, aircraft engineer.

Lawrence James Braithwaite was born in one of the Beatrix Potter Houses, and raised on the shore of Lake Windermere in the Lake District.

At age 15 he joined the Royal Air Force as a ‘Boy Entrant”. He was trained as an airframe mechanic. He married and he and his wife had two daughters and a son. He served 40 years in the RAF rising to Flight Sergeant. He served a year at RCAF Goose Bay in Labrador and three years with the USAF near Omaha, Nebraska.

His speciality was the maintenance of Vulcan bombers. In 1976 he was awarded the British Empire Medal. He left the Air Force in 1989, and was divorced three days later.

He remarried the same year and started a business making silver model aircraft which survived until the recession of 1992.

His second marriage ended in 1993, and in 1994, after consultaion with Russell Reid, Lawrence Became Lynne. She worked with Press for Change, and became the lay advisor on transgender issues to the Lancashire Constabulary. She was a consultant on rebuilding a Vulcan XH558 aircraft.

She died peacefully at age 74 at her home in Morecambe.

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11 September 2009

Brenda Lana Smith, consul, activist.

Brenda Lana Smith has a small but important part in our history. You can read about her in Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, and Richard F. Docter. Becoming a Woman: A Biography of Christine Jorgensen, and the Cleis Press' 2000 edition of Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography.


In her male phase she was a long-time resident of Bermuda and was the Honorary Danish Consul. This led to the bestowment of Ridder af Dannebrogorden (R af D). After a divorce after 29 years of marriage with a son and daughter, Brenda completed transition with surgery with Stanley Biber in 1984. Brenda was introduced to Christine Jorgensen by Sister Mary Elizabeth, and became Christine's housemate for the last six months of her life, and arranged her estate at her death. Later Brenda moved back to England. She has remained active for transsexual rights, and especially against the lack of gay and transsexual rights in Bermuda where the Gender Recognition Act and other UK civil rights acts do not apply.




A few days ago Stephen Whittle commented on this blog:
Brenda,
How lovely to hear you are still alive and kicking so to speak. At this age, one tends to presume the worst far too often.
Is your autobiography on the press yet. Or do we really have to wait until you are gone.
love, Stephen (Whittle) .

 

Brenda has replied:
Greetings, all… especially to Stephen (Whittle OBE—a blast from my
past…)

Rest assured that this otherwise reclusive 76-year-old Anglo-Danish
Mancunian born Bermudian exile is particularly alive and kicking when
it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity being individually
separate and distinct entities that need to be regarded and legislated
as such in much needed amendments to Bermuda's present gay and gender-variant omissive Human Rights Law...

That done and dusted…

As most folk will have probably observed I am not given to bantering
online... this is not so much that I dislike confrontational
situations or that I might diplomatically prefer not to unnecessarily
fuel volatile situations with my two cents' worth... but, since my
early pre World War 2 school days, due to what is now termed Attention Deficit Disorder impeding my committing on paper/online what I might readily articulate…

Whether publicly or privately... we gender-variant folk all seem to
hold that our own particular manifestation of dissociative gender
identification is unique... often deep down believing that we
individually hold the proprietary format on all matters gender-
variant... and… divided by semantics idealistically bicker between
ourselves to that end…the end result is that none of us tend to
countenance our peers lightly… no doubt subconsciously looking for
imperfections that we have yet to come to terms with within our own
selves...

My own metaphysical belief in that we need search inwardly for the
answer to whatever over attracts or irks us gave rise to the
therapeutic content of not only my partially electronically
transcribed journals, but my still self-searching twenty-two year-old
musing: "a'top a dung-hill..." with its some 200-plus A4 page small
print roots in what is a now politically incorrect 1950s mind-set...
remains "a work in progress" procrastinating on my 2.66GHz Intel iMac,
in much need of my editing, and properly punctuating by a grammarian
before ever being photographically embellished and archived for
posterity, whatever…

One thing for sure… while my failing memory is increasingly in the
habit of relying on extracts to support or illustrate an occasional
argument online… any publisher of "a'top a dung-hill…" whose author
The Gender Genie thinks is male… will certainly have a field day
posthumously endeavouring to commercial address my dyslexic 'stream of consciousness' style musing...

So, I while I need not worry about being unable to claim immunity
behind:

"Kindly appreciate that Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. having had no
editorial input whatsoever in the above declines to entertain e-mail
argument on its content..."

A diplomatic fence-sitting rider that I long ago attached on articles
I had gleaned and once widely conduited—that are now posted sans rider on "From brendalana's Archives…" < http://www.bermudasucks.com/forum/index.php?topic=3038.0
My present bloated unresolved concern raised by "Is your autobiography on the press yet, Or do we really have to wait until you are gone…" is to whom I now best leave my archives and memorabilia, etc... to honourably enjoy after I am gone…

Brenda Lana Smith R af D
Cornwall 2009-09-08
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18 May 2008

Letitia Winter (1948 - ) magician.

with the then Prime Minister.
Oliver Winter was born in Holloway, north London. He was in sales and then a motor-cycle messenger, worked as a lab assistant, and in fashion. 

She transitioned to Letitia in her 30s, finding a route through drag pubs, the Porchester Drag Balls and Friend TV/TS Group.  She decided to go into showbiz, but couldn’t sing, so she took up magic under the stage name of Fay Presto.

She has been a great success, and has performed for all senior royalty and many rock stars and actors.

She was the subject of a 1994 BBC profile, Illusions of Grandeur. In 1998 she was voted ‘Party Entertainer of the Year’ by Tatler Magazine. In 2001, she played herself in the ITV soap opera, Emmerdale. One of the few women members of The Inner Magic Circle.

She was on the board of the transsexual rights organization Press for Change.

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