"There's much more to me than being a transsexual. It's about me being a human being. Being Jackie."

Coping with the fallout

The Sunday Times

27th June 2000

A docusoap made Jackie McAuliffe, a transsexual prostitute, a celebrity.
She tells Richard Brooks how she coped with the fallout

Jackie is the doyenne of a new type of television celebrity - the docusoap star. A transsexual prostitute, filmed in the BBC series Paddington Green, Jackie has taken her place alongside such other heroes of the genre as Maureen from Driving School, Jeremy, the airline supervisor from Airport, and Ray, the traffic warden from Clampers.

Except that Jackie claims she does not want to be a star. "I want to be Jackie. Just Jackie. Not remembered as Jackie from Paddington Green or Jackie, the transsexual prostitute. I don't have any real regrets about being in Paddington Green, but I don't want to be a minor TV celebrity."

Jackie McAuliffe may want to eschew stardom, but viewers are endlessly interested. Tomorrow night, BBC I is transmitting a one-off special, Jackie's Story, a final update about Jackie before she retires to what she hopes will be normality. When Paddington Green returns this August, the characters will be different.

We don't sympathise with many docusoap stars, even if we are mesmerised by characters such as Ray Brown, who liked being Britain's most-hated traffic warden, or the memorably unlovable Noeline Donaher, the Aussie bossy-boots matriarch from Sylvania Waters.

But Jackie was different. We felt for her, even when it was hard to understand why she needed to stay on the game to raise more money for a nose job and a chin lift. Looking at the new nose now, I have to say it looks nice and pert, but then, it seemed fine before.

"I still don't think it's attractive," counters Jackie. "Even after the operation. In fact, I could do with a few more ops." She casts her eyes down at her breasts. She had breast implants before the nose and chin job. They, too, were paid for by her earnings from working as a prostitute and still Jackie isn't satisfied.

"Maybe it's a woman thing," she insists. "No, maybe it's that I feel I have to look much better than an average woman because of all I've been through."

Jackie McAuliffe was born Jason McAuliffe. Taken in as a youngster by foster families, she was brought up in the southeast. The northern accent she puts down to northern foster parents, even though they lived in the south. She concedes that it "could be camouflage".

She has held down few jobs - the longest 'proper' one lasting about six months, when she worked in telesales in a local newspaper. "I was good at it. I was good at chatting to people over the phone. I could do it again. But I'm still frightened that any prospective employer might think, 'Oh, she's a transsexual', or 'She's been on the game.'"

The only job that lasted longer was her three years as a prostitute in the Sussex Gardens area of Paddington, London. "I thought I'd do it for six months, but it lasted much longer," she says. But it was a job with a purpose. To raise money for the breasts, nose and chin jobs.

Jackie had her sex change five years ago on the NHS, when she was 25. The operation had been her obsession for a decade. "I focused on it for so long. Just it, virtually nothing else."

Yet though she stopped working as a prostitute 18 months ago, she doesn't deny she is tempted to return. "But only for a while. I know I should have job, but I'm tired after all I've been through. And the money's good."

Maybe. But she admits that much of her immoral earnings was wasted on drink. "It was just the way of life. I needed the drink to do the job, I'd drink at home alone in the afternoon, swigging down the gin. And then the pub in the evening." Jackie thinks viewers presume she is now well off, because she has been on television. "But I'm not. In fact, the opposite." She earned nothing from Paddington Green, although she did gain about £8,000 from a record deal last Autumn with a CD called Forgotten Dreams. A far cry from the £l00,000 one tabloid claimed.

Jackie had been approached by Decca which had seen her singing and playing the piano (she has a grade 7) in Paddington Green. The easy-listening Forgotten Dreams was, frankly, rather forgettable, although it did reach No 14 in the charts. "Bach and Handel are my favourites. Although I quite like the Spice Girls, if it's okay to admit that."

Jackie felt the record deal was "a bit cheap". She adds, "I'm not like Jane McDonald who really wanted to be a star singer." (McDonald was discovered as a singer on Cruise, another BBC docusoap, and has since become extremely successful.) "It wasn't really Jackie," she sighs.

Jackie frequently refers to "Jackie" when talking about herself. When you have spent 25 years of a so-far shortish life with one identity, Jason, and only five years as Jackie, the name fixation is perhaps understandable. A bit like her continuing concern with her looks.

"I know men fancy me," she says. With cropped auburn hair, a neat figure pretty face, nice legs and dainty hands, with a light shade of pink nail varnish, she is certainly feminine. "I'm glad men find me good-looking. But I'm not naive. Sometimes people might just want to have sex with a transvestite."

Not surprisingly, Jackie received hundreds of letters because of Paddington Green. Many were from people who wanted to have a sex change or had had one. "But I didn't reply to them. I'm not counsellor or a transsexual martyr or a propagandist. There's much more to me than being a transsexual. It's about me being a human being. Being Jackie."