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Sex and the single grande dame
June 4, 2005
Age is catching up with Britain's most famous transsexual. But, writes Nigel Farndale, the regal April Ashley is still fighting for official recognition.
As April Ashley shows me the view from the terrace of her small apartment, I sense an echo of her ghost-grey bouffant: the mist creeping down the surrounding hills. Perhaps it is the weather, but there is a melancholy air about this place nestled in a remote, steep-sided valley in the south of France: the leafless trees, the pool in need of a clean, the fairy lights hanging from the awnings.
Perhaps it is her: the faded beauty living alone with her cat and her memories; the hot breath of scandal that once followed her every move now more a last gasp. Or perhaps it's part of April's own appetite for drama, for glamour and for putting the best possible profile forward: "Oh good," she declaims, contemplating the mist. "I need all the soft lighting I can get."
With a rattle of coral jewellery and a waft of Hermes perfume (I asked), she leads the way back inside, past a fridge with a picture of the Queen stuck on it - fittingly, for there's a hint of the Ruritanian monarch about April. She uncorks a bottle of rose and pours a couple of glasses. April turns 70 this month and plays the grande dame accordingly, but her larkiness is that of a much younger person: a mixture of self-mockery, mischief and imperiousness.
She will tilt her head back and raise her eyebrows to emphasise an ironic or catty observation; she will make warm, sweeping, off-the-shoulder gestures one moment and tuck her lips into cold little pouts of disapproval the next. Her anecdotes are polished and seemingly inexhaustible. They are well animated, too: she will give precious little claps of her hands, for instance, when imitating the sound of Kenneth Tynan being spanked (she shared a flat with the drama critic when she was "the Queen of Chelsea" in the swinging '60s).
She name-drops shamelessly, telling how she slept with Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole and how, in her glory days as a model, she agreed to be photographed by David Bailey for Vogue but turned down Picasso and Dali because they seemed too lecherous. Then she will surprise you with a brutal, matter-of-fact remark: "Everyone wanted to meet me in those days, darling, because, you see, I was the freak." By this she means she was one of the first people in the world to have a sex change, and certainly the most famous - notorious - person in England to have one.
That was in 1960, when she was 24. She may have been born male, she says, but she never became a man; indeed her voice never broke properly, she never needed to shave her face and, at the age of 15, she started to grow breasts.
"The chief bliss for a transsexual is to be regarded as a normal woman," she explains. "The chief anxiety, therefore, is the fear of being exposed and ridiculed." In what way? "People were always prodding me. One doctor even tried to pull off my eyelashes because he thought they were false. In fact I have always had naturally long eyelashes. People were often rude. John Lennon, for example. He would say [she adopts a Liverpool accent], 'Here comes the f---ing duchess'. I became quite good friends with him in the end."
She has an aristocratic bearing and a staginess in the way she delivers her lines. The voice is the fruity husk of a dowager on 60 a day. It is not the voice of one born in a Liverpool slum.
George Jamieson, as he was christened, was one of nine children. His mother was vicious, his father a drunken but amiable Royal Navy cook. "My mother hated me," April says. "She used to whack me and I would say, 'Mother, why did you do that?' and she replied, 'In case you did anything.' She was threatened with prison by a doctor because of the injuries on me." April examines her nails nonchalantly. "My mother was dead for 10 years before I found out."
Had George wanted to be like his father? "Yes, I thought he was marvellous." He was an ordinary working-class man, she says, who had extraordinary tastes: oysters and mushrooms gently warmed in cream. And he was tiny. "I was the only one in my family who was tall - 178 centimetres. He was a gentle drunk. He drank himself into a stupor every night. He was the only one in my family who understood me. I saw him just before he died and he said, 'Darling, you are so beautiful. I always knew.' "
At the age of 14, George joined the merchant navy and went to sea a confused young man. "There was this terrible conflict because I was meant to be growing up one thing but becoming another. I took showers at four in the morning so that no one would be there. I was forever being taunted. Life was tortuous. I thought, I can't live as a male and there is no possibility of becoming a female so there is no point to life."
A suicide attempt followed and at 16 he found himself in a high-security mental hospital. "I was tied to my bed and only allowed to eat with a spoon. I was given hormone treatment and electroconvulsive therapy. It must have made me tough."
Happier times came when George moved to Paris in 1955 and became the most glamorous type of transvestite possible: donning the feather boas and sequinned dresses and performing at Le Carrousel, home of the leading drag revue in Paris. There he befriended Sarah Churchill (daughter of), Jean-Paul Sartre and Bob Hope.
Elvis Presley was posted to Germany at the time and would come to Paris every weekend, she says. "He took a big shine to me but before anything could happen the bloody Colonel [Tom Parker, Elvis's manager] was told who I was and Elvis wasn't allowed near me. But he did send me a bottle of champagne every night." By 1960 "George" had saved enough to fly to Casablanca - then almost the only place to offer the operation - and divest himself of the last trappings of his masculinity. Soon after, April returned to London, was spotted by Vogue and became a celebrated model. She also took a role in the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby film The Road to Hong Kong. A year later came the newspaper headline: "Top model April Ashley - her secret is out at last. "A friend sold me out. I knew it was going to happen because too many people were saying, 'I know you from somewhere. Did you used to work in Paris?' "
Had Hope recognised her on set? "Yes, when I was at the Carrousel he and his wife used to take me out for breakfast. He knew my true identity but he didn't say anything. I stayed in the film but the producers took my name off the credits, the bastards."
Revelations about April didn't deter the Honourable Arthur Corbett, a married nightclub owner, son of the chief scout and, as the future Lord Rowallan, the heir to a 2340-hectare estate. He proposed in 1963. "I told Arthur about my sex change straight away. He was a transvestite himself. At Sandhurst he used to ride side-saddle. I never saw him in a frock. But I could see when 'she' appeared. 'She' was terribly jealous of me. One day, when 'she' was being nasty, I told Arthur, 'I'm going to see my lover in Spain, the Duke of Infantado.' And he took me to the airport with seven suitcases and a great dane. That was before we married. I was never unfaithful to him while we were married."
But that wasn't such an impressive feat, I point out, given they separated after two weeks. "Well, he lied to me. He lied that I would be given so much income per annum. I had worked for him for three years, making his club famous: the clientele came to see me. He said he hadn't promised me any money. I said financial security was one of the reasons I married him because I hadn't loved him enough; I told him so on the way to the wedding."
In 1970, Corbett sued for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds that April was a person of the male sex. The case caused a sensation and changed British law when Lord Justice Ormrod decreed that although April had a passport and driving licence describing her as a woman, the Corbett marriage was null and void because she had been born a male. "On the third day I knew we had lost the case because that swine Ormrod would not even look at me. He decided that he wanted me X-rayed and examined from head to toe.
"They brought a doctor from the psychiatric hospital as a witness and he just fumed, 'Mincing, mincing, mincing', and stepped down from the witness box. The case went on for three weeks. I was told the judge's wife looked like a man in drag, so that might have had a bearing on his judgement."
A lot of marriages between people who had had sex changes, or gender reassignments as they are now known, were deemed null and void after Corbett v Corbett. "It was just cruel. A lot of people suffered because of that divorce," April says, her dark and velvety voice thrilling in its indignation. "Transsexuals didn't receive full legal recognition until 2002. It was such petty discrimination."
She has just sent off her birth certificate and is waiting to hear whether it can be changed to acknowledge that she is a woman. "I said maybe for my 70th birthday you will finally do it." And so they should. April has added to the gaiety of nations - dancing on tables, drinking champagne from slippers at dawn, hurtling around in fast cars with louche aristocrats.
She also, she says, had a weakness for toyboys. At Oxford picnics "I was always surrounded by handsome young undergraduates. I went to bed with every one of them, by the way." Did she count the notches on her bedpost? "Oh, no, goodness no." Did she tell prospective lovers her secret?
"Always ... Except for the odd one-night stand where there was no point." April says she was 47 when she slept with INXS singer Michael Hutchence. "I was in Sydney sitting in a hotel with a friend when Hutchence arrived with his entourage. I got talking to him and finally he said, 'Would you like to come up to my room for a bottle of champagne?' He was wonderful. "When I came downstairs in the morning, swinging my knickers around my finger, my friend said, 'Do you know who you have just been to bed with?' I didn't. I'd never heard of INXS."
After divorce and hostessing at a London restaurant, she went to live in Wales for 11 years. Then she left for San Diego. Now she is back in the south of France, for her health. But age is catching up, even with her.
"I hate getting old," she says, pouring two more glasses of wine. "It's a bloody bore. I miss being strong. I used to waltz around the room to Der Rosenkavalier; now I have to shuffle round. I always think of myself as 25. If I could afford a facelift I'd have one tomorrow. Everything has gone south." She smiles and sips her rose. "When I take my bra off now I say, 'God, the floor is cold'."
This article first appeared in The Daily Telegraph Magazine, London.
June 4, 2005
Age is catching up with Britain's most famous transsexual. But, writes Nigel Farndale, the regal April Ashley is still fighting for official recognition.
As April Ashley shows me the view from the terrace of her small apartment, I sense an echo of her ghost-grey bouffant: the mist creeping down the surrounding hills. Perhaps it is the weather, but there is a melancholy air about this place nestled in a remote, steep-sided valley in the south of France: the leafless trees, the pool in need of a clean, the fairy lights hanging from the awnings.
Perhaps it is her: the faded beauty living alone with her cat and her memories; the hot breath of scandal that once followed her every move now more a last gasp. Or perhaps it's part of April's own appetite for drama, for glamour and for putting the best possible profile forward: "Oh good," she declaims, contemplating the mist. "I need all the soft lighting I can get."
With a rattle of coral jewellery and a waft of Hermes perfume (I asked), she leads the way back inside, past a fridge with a picture of the Queen stuck on it - fittingly, for there's a hint of the Ruritanian monarch about April. She uncorks a bottle of rose and pours a couple of glasses. April turns 70 this month and plays the grande dame accordingly, but her larkiness is that of a much younger person: a mixture of self-mockery, mischief and imperiousness.
She will tilt her head back and raise her eyebrows to emphasise an ironic or catty observation; she will make warm, sweeping, off-the-shoulder gestures one moment and tuck her lips into cold little pouts of disapproval the next. Her anecdotes are polished and seemingly inexhaustible. They are well animated, too: she will give precious little claps of her hands, for instance, when imitating the sound of Kenneth Tynan being spanked (she shared a flat with the drama critic when she was "the Queen of Chelsea" in the swinging '60s).
She name-drops shamelessly, telling how she slept with Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole and how, in her glory days as a model, she agreed to be photographed by David Bailey for Vogue but turned down Picasso and Dali because they seemed too lecherous. Then she will surprise you with a brutal, matter-of-fact remark: "Everyone wanted to meet me in those days, darling, because, you see, I was the freak." By this she means she was one of the first people in the world to have a sex change, and certainly the most famous - notorious - person in England to have one.
That was in 1960, when she was 24. She may have been born male, she says, but she never became a man; indeed her voice never broke properly, she never needed to shave her face and, at the age of 15, she started to grow breasts.
"The chief bliss for a transsexual is to be regarded as a normal woman," she explains. "The chief anxiety, therefore, is the fear of being exposed and ridiculed." In what way? "People were always prodding me. One doctor even tried to pull off my eyelashes because he thought they were false. In fact I have always had naturally long eyelashes. People were often rude. John Lennon, for example. He would say [she adopts a Liverpool accent], 'Here comes the f---ing duchess'. I became quite good friends with him in the end."
She has an aristocratic bearing and a staginess in the way she delivers her lines. The voice is the fruity husk of a dowager on 60 a day. It is not the voice of one born in a Liverpool slum.
George Jamieson, as he was christened, was one of nine children. His mother was vicious, his father a drunken but amiable Royal Navy cook. "My mother hated me," April says. "She used to whack me and I would say, 'Mother, why did you do that?' and she replied, 'In case you did anything.' She was threatened with prison by a doctor because of the injuries on me." April examines her nails nonchalantly. "My mother was dead for 10 years before I found out."
Had George wanted to be like his father? "Yes, I thought he was marvellous." He was an ordinary working-class man, she says, who had extraordinary tastes: oysters and mushrooms gently warmed in cream. And he was tiny. "I was the only one in my family who was tall - 178 centimetres. He was a gentle drunk. He drank himself into a stupor every night. He was the only one in my family who understood me. I saw him just before he died and he said, 'Darling, you are so beautiful. I always knew.' "
At the age of 14, George joined the merchant navy and went to sea a confused young man. "There was this terrible conflict because I was meant to be growing up one thing but becoming another. I took showers at four in the morning so that no one would be there. I was forever being taunted. Life was tortuous. I thought, I can't live as a male and there is no possibility of becoming a female so there is no point to life."
A suicide attempt followed and at 16 he found himself in a high-security mental hospital. "I was tied to my bed and only allowed to eat with a spoon. I was given hormone treatment and electroconvulsive therapy. It must have made me tough."
Happier times came when George moved to Paris in 1955 and became the most glamorous type of transvestite possible: donning the feather boas and sequinned dresses and performing at Le Carrousel, home of the leading drag revue in Paris. There he befriended Sarah Churchill (daughter of), Jean-Paul Sartre and Bob Hope.
Elvis Presley was posted to Germany at the time and would come to Paris every weekend, she says. "He took a big shine to me but before anything could happen the bloody Colonel [Tom Parker, Elvis's manager] was told who I was and Elvis wasn't allowed near me. But he did send me a bottle of champagne every night." By 1960 "George" had saved enough to fly to Casablanca - then almost the only place to offer the operation - and divest himself of the last trappings of his masculinity. Soon after, April returned to London, was spotted by Vogue and became a celebrated model. She also took a role in the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby film The Road to Hong Kong. A year later came the newspaper headline: "Top model April Ashley - her secret is out at last. "A friend sold me out. I knew it was going to happen because too many people were saying, 'I know you from somewhere. Did you used to work in Paris?' "
Had Hope recognised her on set? "Yes, when I was at the Carrousel he and his wife used to take me out for breakfast. He knew my true identity but he didn't say anything. I stayed in the film but the producers took my name off the credits, the bastards."
Revelations about April didn't deter the Honourable Arthur Corbett, a married nightclub owner, son of the chief scout and, as the future Lord Rowallan, the heir to a 2340-hectare estate. He proposed in 1963. "I told Arthur about my sex change straight away. He was a transvestite himself. At Sandhurst he used to ride side-saddle. I never saw him in a frock. But I could see when 'she' appeared. 'She' was terribly jealous of me. One day, when 'she' was being nasty, I told Arthur, 'I'm going to see my lover in Spain, the Duke of Infantado.' And he took me to the airport with seven suitcases and a great dane. That was before we married. I was never unfaithful to him while we were married."
But that wasn't such an impressive feat, I point out, given they separated after two weeks. "Well, he lied to me. He lied that I would be given so much income per annum. I had worked for him for three years, making his club famous: the clientele came to see me. He said he hadn't promised me any money. I said financial security was one of the reasons I married him because I hadn't loved him enough; I told him so on the way to the wedding."
In 1970, Corbett sued for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds that April was a person of the male sex. The case caused a sensation and changed British law when Lord Justice Ormrod decreed that although April had a passport and driving licence describing her as a woman, the Corbett marriage was null and void because she had been born a male. "On the third day I knew we had lost the case because that swine Ormrod would not even look at me. He decided that he wanted me X-rayed and examined from head to toe.
"They brought a doctor from the psychiatric hospital as a witness and he just fumed, 'Mincing, mincing, mincing', and stepped down from the witness box. The case went on for three weeks. I was told the judge's wife looked like a man in drag, so that might have had a bearing on his judgement."
A lot of marriages between people who had had sex changes, or gender reassignments as they are now known, were deemed null and void after Corbett v Corbett. "It was just cruel. A lot of people suffered because of that divorce," April says, her dark and velvety voice thrilling in its indignation. "Transsexuals didn't receive full legal recognition until 2002. It was such petty discrimination."
She has just sent off her birth certificate and is waiting to hear whether it can be changed to acknowledge that she is a woman. "I said maybe for my 70th birthday you will finally do it." And so they should. April has added to the gaiety of nations - dancing on tables, drinking champagne from slippers at dawn, hurtling around in fast cars with louche aristocrats.
She also, she says, had a weakness for toyboys. At Oxford picnics "I was always surrounded by handsome young undergraduates. I went to bed with every one of them, by the way." Did she count the notches on her bedpost? "Oh, no, goodness no." Did she tell prospective lovers her secret?
"Always ... Except for the odd one-night stand where there was no point." April says she was 47 when she slept with INXS singer Michael Hutchence. "I was in Sydney sitting in a hotel with a friend when Hutchence arrived with his entourage. I got talking to him and finally he said, 'Would you like to come up to my room for a bottle of champagne?' He was wonderful. "When I came downstairs in the morning, swinging my knickers around my finger, my friend said, 'Do you know who you have just been to bed with?' I didn't. I'd never heard of INXS."
After divorce and hostessing at a London restaurant, she went to live in Wales for 11 years. Then she left for San Diego. Now she is back in the south of France, for her health. But age is catching up, even with her.
"I hate getting old," she says, pouring two more glasses of wine. "It's a bloody bore. I miss being strong. I used to waltz around the room to Der Rosenkavalier; now I have to shuffle round. I always think of myself as 25. If I could afford a facelift I'd have one tomorrow. Everything has gone south." She smiles and sips her rose. "When I take my bra off now I say, 'God, the floor is cold'."
This article first appeared in The Daily Telegraph Magazine, London.
Then again, that's what we're all about here, eh?
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