Kellie Maloney is sitting on the sofa, legs curled beneath her. Her dogs Winnie and Louis — airedale terriers — are sitting opposite her. “They’re my family now,” says Kellie. She looks suddenly emotional. “If I could have taken a pill to stop all this from happening I would have done, because look at what’s happened. I’ve hurt so many people by doing this, by being this way. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”
The “this” is is the fact that Kellie used to be a man. She is now a fully transitioned woman (the gender reassignment was completed in April) and has had extensive surgery to become Kellie. Before this, she was Frank Maloney the boxing promoter, most notable for managing Lennox Lewis to the title of undisputed heavyweight championship of the world in 1999. He was also a twice-married man and father of three girls, Emma, 36, from his marriage to childhood sweetheart Jackie, and Sophie, 20, and Libby, 14, with second wife Tracey. There are pictures of all of them on the walls in the sitting room. Some are of three blonde girls with their father, short-haired, greying Frank aged in his 50s. The others show them with Kellie who is also a blonde and looks significantly younger than Frank.
“I like having the photographs up,” says Kellie. “I don’t want to erase my past. That would be disrespectful towards my daughters. They still call me Dad. I am their dad but it all gets muddled sometimes.”
In order to explain what has gone on in her life, Kellie has written a book. Called Frankly Kellie, it charts her life in minute and sometimes excruciating detail. There’s the suicide attempt, the drinking, the rows, the self-hatred. There’s the pain of having to tell her daughters about her decision, the reactions from her family and the inevitable fall-out from friends. “I told five very good friends and, out of them, two have not spoken to me since,” she says.
What does she feel when she looks at pictures of him? At Frank?
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“He makes me smile,” she says. “He was a lot of fun but he was also a difficult man.” She sighs and looks suddenly nervous. “He was living a lie and he hated himself for it and for who he was. I used to go to bed at night and dream I’d wake up and I’d be a girl, and all the hell would be over, but it never was.”
This is partly why Kellie has published a second book (her first autobiography while still Frank was called No Baloney, and came out in 2003). “I want people to try and understand, because it’s confusing enough for me, let alone anyone else.”
It has been some journey. Frankly Kellie charts the story of her life as Frank Maloney to how she became Kellie. This journey has obviously been painful and left many scars, and not just of the physical variety. “I will never forget the look on Tracey’s face when I told her,” she says. Her then wife was understandably shocked but also supportive. “I knew I’d shattered her world. I still love her but I couldn’t keep on living a lie.”
She also reveals what happened when she told the children. “I was drunk when I told Emma. I just couldn’t help myself and it was a relief to tell her. She was so supportive.
“I think Libby found it the hardest,” she continues. “She just couldn’t get her head round it, but interestingly enough, she’s the one who knows the most about it now. I am just so happy I didn’t have a son. My two brothers have found it hard to accept me as Kellie and I think a male child would not have been as accepting as my daughters have been.”
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I am not surprised. As Frank, she was the epitome of the wise-cracking bloke. Frank Maloney was a boxing promoter, the “pint-sized pugilist” as larger-than-life American boxing promoter Don King called him. Frank Maloney was renowned for his Union Jack suits, drinking too much and his anger. Yet he had braggadocio and, even now, Kellie says she misses him. “If I met Frank Maloney now, I’d date him.”
Although this might sound strange — how can you date yourself? — it doesn’t feel strange when talking to Kellie.Nothing much feels strange because it is all so very strange. Her kids call her Dad despite the fact she is wearing a dress. Some friends call her Frank, others call her Kellie. She has the body of a woman yet her voice is still that of a man. “I’ve been working on that,” she says, “and it’s the one thing I can’t get right.” Kellie tells me she is trying to soften it but admits that, when she is speaking on the telephone, most people assume she is a man.
She says the main difference for her, other than the fact that she is now changed so much physically, is that she is at peace with who she is. “My kids tell me I am softer now and easier to get on with. Frank had a temper. He could be harsh and he was . . . he was . . . ” She looks away. “He was a man often at breaking point,” she says finally.
She tells me that a lot of this was because, for so many years, she had to put on a front. “I am a woman born into a man’s body but I had to deny who I was.”
Even aged three she knew she was supposed to be a girl, but as a male child born into a traditional working-class Irish family in London, she felt very scared of admitting how she felt. “How could I tell my father that I wanted to dress like a girl and play with dolls? He didn’t even think me and my two brothers should even help my mother with the washing-up!”
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Throughout his life the Frank/Kellie split often left Frank in a state of self-loathing, trying to contain his barely suppressed anger. This was apparent in Celebrity Big Brother last year which Kellie went on to try to open people’s minds about transgender issues. “But Frank was there for the first week,” she says. “I felt frightened and threatened and this loud mouthy man took over.”
The book tells of how, in a fit of towering rage and self-hatred, Frank tried to strangle Tracey one night after he’d drunk too much. “I was drinking and I couldn’t bear it any more and I ended up with my hands around Tracey’s neck. I was so angry I wanted to just kill her.” He was only prevented from doing so when his two young daughters walked in. “I feel so ashamed of that,” he says.
Eventually, Frank told Tracey what the “problem” was. “By now, Tracey thought I was having an affair or I was gay or . . . she never imagined it was this.”
Although Frank had let his wife know, he still felt no better. “I was tortured because I thought maybe Tracey and I could work it out.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t have anything much to give her but I somehow kept on thinking I could make things right.”
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He ended up attempting to commit suicide by overdosing.
“I drank myself stupid and took all these pills and then I went out to walk the dogs. They saw something to chase and pulled me over and then some kind people found me. If it hadn’t been for them and the dogs, I don’t think I’d be here now.”
I ask her what has been the most difficult thing to get right in terms of the transition from Frank to Kellie.
She lists all the things she has had done; hormone therapy, electrolysis on her face to get rid of facial hair, surgery to remove her Adam’s apple, facial feminisation surgery, lip enhancement, a facelift to lift her cheekbones, an eyelift, a new hairline done by a whizzy technique. “I experimented with hair colour but I suit honey blond.” She wears a wig of real hair that is woven into her own. “I am still working on my voice and I found high heels almost impossible to walk in,” she adds. She asks her daughters for advice. “They say, ‘Those heels are too high’ and ‘You’re striding out too much.’ ”
When it comes to fashion, though, Kellie gets confused. “I am like a teenager because I am catching up on all those years when I was a man. I want to wear crop tops and short skirts but my daughters tell me I look silly, so I try to copy women television presenters like Lorraine Kelly and Clare Balding.”
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Earlier on this year she underwent 5½ hours of full body surgery to become a woman. “I had my breasts done at the same time,” she says. Those operations, however complicated, have proven to be successful. However, an operation to feminise her face even more went so wrong that Kellie ended up in hospital fighting for her life. “I can’t talk about it now,” she says. “There’s a legal case going on but let’s just say, I have had enough of operations.”
So, how does Kellie feel now? She is the UK version of American former male sports star now Vanity Fair cover girl Caitlyn Jenner isn’t she?
“No. I’m a goldfish in a bowl. Caitlyn is an exotic fish in a wonderful aquarium in LA swimming with sharks.”
Does she now think like a woman? Kellie laughs. “I still do have a man’s brain in a way,” she says. “I have noticed that I can tell when men are going to get rowdy. My female friends say ‘How do you know that’ and they forget that I’ve been a man.” She says she also finds that men speak down to women in a way she never noticed before. “I had no idea how little men respect women until I became one,” she says. “Most men don’t rate women that much.”
The most difficult thing for her to talk about is her sexuality. “Of course it’s difficult. Do I fancy men or women or what? So, look, I am a heterosexual woman. There. I’ve said it and that’s the first time I have said it to anyone: I am a heterosexual woman. That’s the final step, isn’t it?”
Frankly Kellie (Blink Publishing, £18.45), is out now
Kellie Maloney’s perfect weekend
House of Cards or Game of Thrones?
House of Cards
Romance or thriller?
Romance
Wine or water?
Wine
Slippers or stilettos?
Stilettos
Soap opera or real opera?
Soap opera
Full English or skinny soy latte?
Full English
Art gallery or pub sesh?
Pub sesh
Cook or be cooked for?
Cooked for
Pilates or personal trainer?
Personal trainer
Beyoncé or Barry White?
Barry
Theatre or ringside?
Theatre
Twitter or telephone?
Telephone
I couldn’t get through the weekend without...
... walking my dogs