My dad died before I had my sex change but I don’t think he’d have understood
In a brave and compelling interview, Kellie Maloney tells of the anguish and confusion she still feels after her transformation from boxing promoter Frank
BREAKFAST is in full service at Brooks Hotel on Drury Street and the lobby room smells of cooked bacon, ground coffee and freshly toasted bread. An elderly woman gracefully totters across the lounge and approaches a smartly dressed female sitting in the corner of the room.
‘I’ll be with you in a moment, dear, I am just doing this interview,’ responds Kellie Maloney. ‘Why don’t you sit with my mother and we will have a chat later?’ Britain’s most famous transgender woman was formerly altruistic, machismo, boxing King Frank Maloney. But today, as Kellie, he is meeting with the head of an Irish support group helping to mentor Ireland’s transgender community. As a role model, it is a part of her life that Kellie takes seriously. It is also something that she would never have dreamed possible had her father, an Irish Catholic farmer from Roscrea, been alive today.
‘I was born to working class Irish Catholic parents, even though my mum is my best friend and travels everywhere with me, and came to terms with it really well,’ she says. ‘It would have been very hard for my father to accept. Especially because he had been as proud of my life as Frank Maloney t he boxing promoter, he had me on a pedestal and it would have been so hard to tell him, I was so frightened from birth that he would find out and lose that respect for me. I felt I would disappoint him and let him down. He was a man’s man and I couldn’t have changed his opinion of me.’
Kellie’s mum, 80-year- old Maureen, was born in Wicklow and watches our exchanges from the corner of her eye. Kellie recalls fondly summers spent on her dad Thomas’s farm in Tipperary and clasps her hands and daintily painted nails with joy as she speaks about childhood summers spent in Munster.
‘I spent a lot of time in Ireland as a child. I actually went to school here for a while in Harold’s Cross, but I only lasted six weeks,’ she says. ‘ The nuns didn’t agree with me and I spent all my summer holidays in Ireland. We would come here for six weeks. We would spend three weeks in Dublin and three weeks in Roscrea in my father’s parents’ farm in the countryside.
‘They were great times, some of the greatest times of my life because they were so carefree. Down in Tipperary we would run amuck on the farm, chasing the chickens, bringing in the cows with my grandfather and jump about in the hay. Our treat was every Sunday we would go to Mass in the horse and cart and ride the donkeys. They were great days.’
Kellie’s fond memories are few and far between, as most of her life she has been in hiding, burying her innermost feelings and lying to everyone, including herself. She describes her formative years as difficult, dreaming at night of life as a young woman, while during the day training to be an amateur boxer and sparring with life.
‘I never dreamed of being a professional footballer, a pop star, a boxer, a racing driver, I was always a little girl. I eventually read an article in the early sixties by April Ashley and I went, “I can relate to this, I must be a transsexual.” That’s when I started doing my research and started learning more about i t. But I got really frightened and I didn’t want to admit to it, obviously because of my family background.’
Desperate to fit in, Frank Maloney started a family, bought a pub, got married to his now ex-wife Jackie and had three children: Libby, Emma and Sophie. Then, 16 years ago in Las Vegas, Maloney watched his star client Lennox Lewis beat Evander Holyfield to claim the world heavyweight title. In front of a television audience of millions and wearing a gaudy Union Jack suit, Frank Maloney became the brash face of British boxing.
It was then the most l ucrative pay-per-view bout of all time, and Lewis was the first Britain since the 19th century to be crowned the undisputed champion of the world. On the face of it, Maloney had it all — but beneath the surface, he was in turmoil. ‘Lennox was huge, he made me,’ she says. ‘I could never deny the part he played in my life.
‘If I am honest, he made and created Frank Maloney. Before that, I was just a London publican that used to do small boxing shows. I was struggling and then along he came and boom — I arrived. I was one of the most powerful people in world boxing, had contracts with Sky TV and was the go-to voice of British boxing. I even debated at Oxford University debating society.
‘I never realised how quick my fame was going and, at that time, it had become a major conflict within me. And although the world saw this carefree, confident man, deep down I was a very tormented and angry person — angry with myself. And while you can’t fight yourself, you end up hurting the people close to you. Now Frank is gone. There is still part of him in me; for 60 years I was him, and I can’t put him in a coffin and bury him. But I had adjusted my personality to what suits me now. Frank was always angry and aggressive; a testosterone-fuelled male who wanted to be the best at everything. What you see now is what you get, and that isn’t what Frank was.’
Kellie is sitting wearing a pair of beige cigarette pants, a patterned blouse and blue silk scarf and is open and honest. However, the mention of Olympic hero Darren Sutherland, a fighter Frank also once managed who tragically took his life, causes her to sit back. Frank found Darren’s body in his apartment in south east London in 2009. It was later claimed in an inquest by Darren’s family that one of the reasons behind his suicide was that Maloney would ‘ruin him’ for quitting the sport. It is a claim that Kellie strenuously denies.
‘Darren’s death had a huge impact on me,’ she says. ‘I don’t really talk about the Darren Sutherland issue because it is still quite deep inside me. I don’t think I will ever get over that day, if I am honest. I don’t think I will ever get over the way people tried to accuse me of forcing him to commit suicide. I think that was a very sad day. I know he was much loved, and when I come to Ireland I think of him. I know that I was nothing to do with his death. I don’t care what everyone wants to throw at me. I can put my head on the pillow at night. I sat down with him and we worked out how he can retire from boxing.’
Kellie pauses and takes a stiff drink from her coffee cup, looking rattled by the issue.
It was only three years ago that she tried to take her own life, on Christmas Day 2012.
‘I had to hit rock bottom and I couldn’t keep fighting with myself so suicide became a realistic out,’ she recalls.
‘I had started counselling in 1992 and I would phone up support groups and talk to them,’ she says. ‘Then I would move on to another group in case I was recognised as Frank Maloney.
‘I was always trying to balance my life and hide that inner feeling. But in 2012 I ran out of options and that was the nearest I came to taking my life. It was Christmas 2012 and that was rock bottom. I had tried to take my own life, and when I realised what I had almost done, I went back home after being missing for three or four hours. My ex- partner told me what a selfish bastard I was to try and kill myself on Christmas Day; that would destroy Christmas for my children for the rest of their lives.
‘ Something hit me and I realised that I had to be honest and I now have to accept things. And come to terms with myself.’ Once Kellie had
made the decision to transition, she found immediate inner peace. Much like Bruce Jenner, Frank moved out of the family home and started the transformation into Kellie.
‘Like Caitlyn, I moved out of the family home, rented a place away from the world and didn’t tell anyone where I was going and continued with the transformation. From that moment in 2012, I decided to live 80 per cent as Kellie and just let Frank appear in the boxing world. I started growing my hair long. I started wearing clothes that could pass for any sex. I just started building up my wardrobe and joined TG Powles support group and that really helped me. I met a lot of girls who were going through the same changes I was. Talking to people was the key.
‘I think the hardest thing was becoming honest with myself, and once I had accepted myself, things started to get a little bit easier for me.’
Kellie is quick to point out that she is not in the same financial league as Caitlyn Jenner and was willing to go broke to complete the surgery necessary to become a legal female.
‘ I didn’t have the wealth that Caitlyn had’, she says. ‘Because I was so determined to go on this journey and I was prepared to borrow money on some property, I had to get all my work done. I used my savings because I had just gone through a divorce which cost a lot of money, and I was prepared, if I had to, to go out, get a job and work 24/7. That is how great the desire was to complete the journey.’ At 62, Kellie believes her whole life is ahead of her. She nods over at her next appointment, an Irish transgender female anxiously waiting for advice from this public role model.
She has written a book about her own experiences, Frankly Kellie, and now she is hoping to repeat Frank’s success in the world of sport, as well as taking on a few other projects.
‘I have just started back in boxing. It is interesting now, because I am doing it because I want to do it. I am just taking my time, and where Frank Maloney would have jumped in head first, Kellie is taking her time. I am a lot more careful in what I do now.
‘I do different work now. I think in public the boxing community is supportive, but behind closed doors I think there is a l ot of sneers and jokes.’
Kellie says she is celibate despite being pictured last week on a date or two with actor Lincoln Hudson.
‘I went on a date with Lincoln last week and he has asked me out again. And I have said yes. But at the moment they are just dates,’ she says. ‘I really hope Caitlyn Jenner talks about the gender i ssue, which she hasn’t yet. Gender i s not the same as sexuality. We must learn to differentiate between the two. Transsexual is not about your sexuality. I am very conscious of that.
‘Most people assume that being transgender means you are homosexual, which is not accurate. Until I l earn my own sexuality, whether I want to be with a man or a woman, I don’t know my sexuality. That is still the part of the journey I am still on. I may never decide, I may live this celibate life that I lead. As far as I am concerned, I am a fully functioning woman, all my paperwork has changed to make me female, and I don’t care what the feminists say. But if I go to bed with a man does that make me a gay man or a heterosexual woman? If I go t o be with a woman, am Ia heterosexual male or a lesbian? Nobody seems to be able to answer that question and I believe that love knows no boundaries.
‘ You can’t stop yourself falling in love.’
Frankly Kellie by Kellie Maloney is published by Blink Press and is on sale now.