"Whatever happens after this record, I'll always be a success in my own right. I can deal with my problems. I can accept who I am, and I am beginning to like who I am. And if you can get to that stage, you are a successful person." [mpeg: 6.4MB]

Viewers' comments

These are various remarks found on the net, with comments. Some are positive, some negative.

So many stories to tell on Paddington Green

[...] My favourite character throughout all of the series has to of been Jackie. Yeah, people have been cruel to her, I mean, she hasn't exactly had the ideal lifestyle, but it is getting better, as all viewers of the programme have noticed. Jackie is a transsexual who was born as 'Jason' 28 years ago. In about 1993-1994 she had the gender operation and then unfortunately had to get into prostitution to make money for more plastic surgery. After being discovered on Paddington Green, it has been found out that she has an amazing talent for playing the piano, which could be due to her foster parents buying her a piano when she was a young boy.

After all of the hype of the show, she has even released her own single which entered in at number 14 in the charts.

Having run the risk of heavy fines by the police for soliciting on the streets, Jackie began working from home. When she decides to have plastic surgery on her nose and chin, the finishing touches in her long journey to become a woman? she must have an AIDS test. The hazards of her profession make the risks of contracting AIDS much higher, so the wait for the result is an anxious time. Despite her fears Jackie needs money, so she continues working the streets.

I found Jackie's own personal website when looking up to see if I could find when the next series of Paddington Green was to be aired. Her web address is: http://www.jackiemcauliffe.net and makes really interesting reading.

The Jackie McAuliffe Website

Paddington Green is on our screens AGAIN! But the series takes an increasingly absurd definition of what constitutes Paddington, and has become very stylised and predictable. Yet it continues to be praised by the warped sensibilities of critics like Victor Lewis Smith of the Evening Standard.

The undoubted star of the show was Jackie McAuliffe, the girl who was born a boy, and who worked as a prostitute on Sussex Gardens. A devoted fan has put together an unusual website celebrating her life and appearances on the show and in the media.

Since Jackie has become a symbol of Paddington in the national consciousness (and presumably the world - as PG has been syndicated in America and elsewhere), you should investigate further.

Gender.org

"Paddington Green" -- Weekly Documentary/Drama show on BBC features a transsexual prostitute

BBC1 now features Jackie (TS prostitute) in weekly program on Monday nights at 9.30 pm.

The programme charts the ordinary lives of ordinary people in an area of inner London called Paddington Green. Jackie comes across as a relaxed transsexual who works on the street and we see her showing us the actual blocks her trade can be found. Amazingly, having a viewing total around ten million, I think her trade is now likely to rapidly improve.

Other characters in the Paddington Green weekly show are a small family business with argumentative father and daughter, a struggling shop run by an ageing wig maker.

The show is to last many weeks and it is the intention of the producers that we all get to know each of the subjects intimately and the nation warms to them.

We now have regular TS characters on both main UK channels. On ITV we have fictional Hayley in Coronation Street and now we have real Jackie in Paddington Green on the other main channel. This is healthy competition. Both people are portrayed in a positive light, which is a good thing.

I suppose the long term hope is that regular media coverage will further normalise transsexuals in the community. But what of transgendered people, will the UK media be interested in broader picture? I wonder.

Hopefully this site will my way of contributing.

Religious television programmes - sunday 24 january 1999

After the Songs of Praise extended trail there were 9 minutes, which included clips from a recent BBC television docu-soap, Paddington Green and studio interview with a sex-changed prostitute who had been featured. There was no moral dimension to the questioning.

Indeed. There is a pressing need to focus on the moral dimensions of a society that forces people to sell their body in order to obtain a normal life, or refuses to recognise their right to marry or have children. But somehow I don't think you will be concered about these matters, am I not correct?

Vibes - Scotland On Line

Image is All - 15 June 1999

While we’re on the subject of must-have looks, it was a tense moment when trans-sexual prostitute Jackie had her bandages pulled off in the second run of the docu-soap to mock all others in the genre. Paddington Green (BBC1) is back with all the characters we left behind – and there was no chance anyone would go into the shower in the morning and realise it had all been a bad dream. Actually, it was a dream come true for Jackie who, after saving relentlessly for cosmetic surgery, now has a more feminine nose. Or so we were told. It was not possible to see the difference unless you had a freeze frame of the last series for comparative purposes. Still, if Jackie was happy we were happy. This continues to be addictive viewing, not least because of the well-chosen subjects who range from sensational to humdrum to just bizarre. After all, there’s nothing as queer as folk and there’s nothing quite so fascinating.

Street Market Culture

Forget Portobello and Camden Roads, spend a day poking around Edgware Road for a true sampling of London's astonishing street market culture. The area around Paddington Green is famous for being the most diverse and multi-ethnic patch of Central London. It's so famous, in fact, they even made a TV show about it. Paddington Green, the BBC's first successful 'docu- soap', follows the real lives of this neighborhood's motley residents, from plumbers to transvestites.

I would think the first rule for a reviewer would be to watch the series before making a comment. Personally I haven't seen neither plumbers nor transvestites on the show.

Press For Change newsletter - August 1999

BBC TV 'Paddington Green'

There has been a mixed reaction from trans people to the featuring of a transsexual woman in this new docu-soap, with a few people fearing that we will all be stereotyped as prostitutes just because Jackie talks frankly about how she worked to pay for her op. But there has been huge positive coverage in the mainstream press and the public have taken this very nice young woman to their hearts. She deserves our respect and gratitude.

1999 In Vision

It’s been a positive queer-fest on the box in 1999. On the drama front we’ve had ‘Queer As Folk, ‘Bad Girls’, Lindsey and Shelley in Brookside, Doctor Fred in Eastenders, Clive in Family Affairs, Gavin and Jason In Emmerdale, not forgetting Zoe.

Entertainment-wise there was Graham Norton achieving mainstream success, along with Lily Savage and Michael Barrymore, plus specials devoted to Abba, Queen and Diana Ross. Among the documentaries, who can forget Jackie, the transgendered in ‘Paddington Green’, leaving prostitution behind and starting a new career as a pianist.

Thankfully the gay community is not as bigoted as the general majority.

Paddington Green reprieved for 24 more episodes

The controversial docu-soap 'Paddington Green', which featured prominently in the BBC 1 schedules in 1999 is to continue in 2000. While some residents have found the series to be 'charming' and 'fascinating', others have dismissed it as 'boring' and 'focusing too much on low-life'.

I wonder who they are referring to as 'low-life'? Apart from Jackie obviously challenging some preconceptions and prejudices, most of the people in the series have one thing in common - struggling to make a living. Some, like Jason the locksmith, work around the clock to make ends meet, others, like Dave, Camilla and later Jackie, sometimes don't know where their next meal is coming from. If being poor automatically qualifies for low-life, most of us have been so at one time in life.

"Let me give you a valueable lesson in life. The poor are poor.
One feels sorry for them, but that's how it is."

- E. M. Forster, Return to Howard's End

Uggh!! Paddington Green Returns

Like 'Big Brother', Paddington Green thrives on the promise of exposing things which ought to remain private, in public. That's why the ratings soared for Jackie, the 'reformed' prostitute. This 'voyeurism' degrades the viewer.

While I agree that it remains to be seen whether the media exposure in the long run will turn out good or bad for Jackie, it is beyond any doubt that her story has done more to remove public prejudice than all efforts of the UK media so far. If her fate should have been remained private, it should have been to protect her, not because she should have anything to feel ashamed of. And as a viewer, far from being degraded I it has been a great privilege to get to know her.

Is the no end to docusoaps?

Currently showing on BBC1 this series follows the lives of the residents of west London's Paddington Green. Among the people who were and in some cases still are happy to put their lives on display were models, prostitutes, safe crackers, special constables, entrepreneurs and housing estate mums.

[...] And who can forget transsexual Jackie McCauliffe's trials and tribulations as she played out her life-changing decisions to change sex in front of the camera.

Actually, it was a nose job. But don't let that stop you.

Trendfax - London people

Jackie McAuliffe: Hiess einst Jason und gelangte zu Prominenz durch "Paddington Green" von BBC1. In der Sendung wurde das bodenständige Leben rund um Paddington gezeigt, wo Jackie eine Prostituierte mit viel Stil und einer scharfen Zunge war. Jetzt ist sie so etwas wie ein Starlet geworden und kann derzeit von der Publicity leben. Sie ist der Prostitution entstiegen und will längerfristig zum TV.

A Grrls Guide to Trash TV Day by Day

Previous TV Rants and Raves By Jules (Helens additions)

Also love the Paddington Green true life series. The transexual prostitute is the most amazing woman. Good luck to her.

DVD Fever

Wednesday : At the factory Linda is scheming in CORONATION STREET (ITV, 7.30pm), while Gary finds there's more to cleaning windows than singing a crap song and having a cheeky cockney accent. BROOKSIDE sees Jacqui ensuring that the truth will out for Mike, and Harvey gets the better of Ryan, and Joey and Luke are reconciled. FILM 99 WITH JONATHAN ROSS has gone for a summer Burton so soon into its run, but the freakshow returns for the oddities that inhabit PADDINGTON GREEN (BBC1, 10.20pm) and I bet you're so glad you don't live there.

Hope you didn't bet too much, as not moving to Paddington this year is one of the worst disappointments of my life.

Telling the World

There does seem to be a lot of tolerant and informed people about these days. I think of it as the 'Hayley effect' or the 'Jackie effect'. Everyone watches 'Corrie' and many watched Paddington Green on the BBC and followed Jackie McAuliffe's monumentally difficult TS life. Things like this break down public misconceptions in a bigger way than you can ever, ever imagine. It seems that hardly a week goes by without some sort of a story breaking in the news involving a TS. At least journalism has climbed out of the gutter these days and gives the appearance of wanting to inform rather than humiliate. I even saw my psychologist on television recently! Three cheers for RR!