April Ashley: Portrait Of A Lady

Two months after April Ashley entered the world at the age of 25, she lost her virginity – to an American man called Skippy. “It was 14 July 1960, Bastille Day. Afterwards I was crying with happiness. I remember Skippy opening the window and everyone was honking their horns and waving flags and he said, 'Look, the whole of Paris is celebrating the loss of your virginity.’”

I bring up a rumour that she was pretty promiscuous for a while after the sex change. Again she looks at me from under one arched eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you have been?” she says dryly.

Back in London, she began to get modelling work. For a time she wasVogue’s most popular underwear model. But this honeymoon period didn’t last long. A year later she was the subject of an exposé in the Sunday People revealing that she’d once been a man – she was betrayed by a friend for just £5.

“And I never got another modelling job from that day to this. Six months’ worth of booking was cancelled overnight.” She’d already been hired to appear in the film The Road to Hong Kong with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope when the story broke. “But when the film came out only my back was seen and my name didn’t even appear on the credits.”

Elvis, John Prescott  And Me: An interview with April Ashley, Britain's first transsexual, Daily Telegraph.

Fifty years on, the tabloids still think it's good fun to out transsexuals.

An exhibition, April Ashley: Portrait of a lady, opens today at the Museum of Liverpool, it is free.