Stripping Off with Matt Haycox
Welcome to 'Stripping Off with Matt Haycox,' where we bare it all on business, money, and life. Get ready to peel back the layers of success with entrepreneur, investor, funding expert, and mentor with over 20 years of experience building and growing businesses, Matt Haycox.
Tune into steamy conversations with industry titans, celebrities, and successful entrepreneurs as they strip down their stories of triumphs, setbacks, and the raw realities of their journey to the top. Matt is going down on business, money, and life, and will take DMCs to new heights!
Stripping Off with Matt Haycox
I Was Shot Up with Male Hormones Without My Knowledge!” Lady Colin Campbell’s Shocking Life Revealed
Tell us what you like or dislike about this episode!! Be honest, we don't bite!
This week I sat down with the fearless Lady Colin Campbell, who’s here to share her extraordinary life story filled with shocking revelations and unfiltered opinions. From her upbringing in “a world of great lavishness” that was also “oppressive and restrictive,” to her candid experiences with gender identity, Lady Colin pulls no punches. Her powerful declaration, “I was shot up with male hormones without my knowledge,” sets the stage for a conversation that challenges conventional narratives around identity and medical ethics.
Lady Colin doesn't shy away from controversy, emphasising that “experts tampering with the minds of children is dangerous” as she tackles today's pressing issues surrounding gender identity and age of consent. We also explore her bold views on the British royal family, including her fierce critiques of Harry and Meghan, stating that “Meghan has tried to create herself as the second Diana, but she doesn’t have any of Diana’s attributes—only her failings.”
This is a must-listen episode that promises raw insights, compelling stories, and a fearless exploration of societal norms. Tune in to hear Lady Colin's unfiltered take on identity, family dynamics, and royal drama!
#LadyColinCampbell #RoyalFamily #GenderIdentity #ShockingRevelations #TransgenderIssues #MedicalEthics #RoyalScandals #HormonalManipulation #CandidConversations #RealTalk #MustListen #ListenNow #Podcast
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro
0:37 - Lady Colin Campbell's Background
5:41 - Gender Identification Issues
12:34 - Parental Interaction
17:43 - Leaving Jamaica
20:35 - Grandpa's Murder
21:32 - Seeing Mum's Gynecologist and then Dr & Dr Stamm
25:52 - Treatment Process
30:21 - Getting the Surgery
35:56 - Today's Issues Surrounding Transgenderism
40:32 - Age's of Consent
49:14 - Royal Biography Books
01:03:09 - Scandals
01:04:12 - Harry and Meghan
01:13:30 - What's the Future hold for Lady Colin Campbell?
01:17:50 - Conclusion
Who Is Matt Haycox? - Click for BADASS Trailer
Are you ready to unlock your full potential and take your business to the next level? I’m Matt Haycox—entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and your go-to guy for no-bollocks advice on business and personal growth.
With over 25 years of experience building and funding businesses across industries, I’ve faced it all—wins, losses, and the ultimate comeback story. Through my podcasts, No Bollocks with Matt Haycox and Stripping Off with Matt Haycox, I cut through the bullshit to bring you real, actionable strategies and raw conversations with entrepreneurs, celebrities, and industry leaders.
Whether you’re looking to scale your business, secure funding, or avoid the mistakes I’ve learned the hard way, my goal is simple: to help YOU create YOUR success story.
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I was a living proof that gender is not a social construct.
Speaker 2:This is getting exciting. Already I have today unquestionably my poshest guest to date. Welcome to the show, lady Colin Campbell.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me, Matt.
Speaker 2:I'm looking forward to this because I've already, in the 10 minutes that we've been speaking before we started, had a real education on on titles and and royals and nobility and all these things that I I don't understand. That's one of the best things for the podcast. For me, it's, uh, it's such a great learning experience about about everything I don't know about, um, listen, um, I mean, you've got many, many years of of stories and adventures and and things to tell us. Can we, can we go back to the beginning, when I think you were born in Jamaica, yes, where you lived until you were 18. Take me back to the beginning and tell me how it all began.
Speaker 1:Oh well, I'm afraid my memory is a bit hazy on the day of my birth. But putting that aside, I was born on the 17th of August 1949. And my mother was from a very old, established British family which meant a great deal in those days. I mean, her father was or her official father, I should say, because he might not have been, her father naturally was. This is getting exciting already. He was a Smedmore, which was a very grand English family, and in those days that sort of thing counted very greatly because her mother was a Burke, which was Irish and part Irish, part Jewish. And the gradations when I was a child were very interesting because to be English was the absolute best. Then to be Irish or Scottish came after. If you were in Jamaica, to be Jewish was very good because the oldest white settlers of Jamaica were the Jewish of Harwood, who you might not know who he was.
Speaker 1:I've certainly heard the name, but I'm not sure who he was, his grandmother was the Princess Royal, the previous Princess Royal, and so that was my mother's family. My mother was really the one that gave my father entree into what was called society in those days.
Speaker 2:Was Jamaica a big place back then? I'm sure the physical size of the island has not changed, but in terms of population or interaction with the rest of the world, Well after the war, britain had austerity, jamaica had plentitude.
Speaker 1:So until the mid-50s all the grandies cleared out of England and went to Jamaica, either to live permanently or have winter houses and be there temporarily. At the same time, somebody called John Pringle was creating a place called Roundhill, which people like Bill Paley you must know who Bill Paley was, he was the head of CBS, I mean, he was Mr Television in the 50s, he and his wife Babe, who was one of Capote's swans and you had. So you had people like him and JP Morgan Jr, and you had people like Winston Churchill visiting Jack and Jackie Kennedy. You had the absolute elite of the world going to Jamaica every winter because there was no restrictions whatsoever In England. You not only had austerity, you had financial controls I forget what they're called Currency control and so I was brought up in a world that was and of course Jamaica had fabulous weather, and so I was very lucky.
Speaker 1:I was brought up in a world of great lavishness and we had everybody had loads of servants, and it was. It was a very traditional world in many ways and superficially very glamorous, but also very oppressive and restrictive because and I figured this out with the passage of time one of the disadvantages of the world of plentitude is that is the predictability. In New York, in London, when I was young, you woke up and even if you knew what you were going to do that day, you could have done something differently. There was the possibility of something left field happening. In Jamaica it was the absolute certainty. All that unnecessary sunshine and luxury, and it was very by the time I was 12, I couldn't wait to get out. I have to tell you it was so restrictive and oppressive.
Speaker 2:Did you have brothers and sisters?
Speaker 1:I had one brother who was older and two sisters who were younger.
Speaker 2:Hey, Matt here. Thanks for listening to Stripping Off with Matt Haycox, but did you also know I've got another podcast, no Bollocks, with Matt Haycox. Both of these are very different. If you're enjoying the deep dives with the guests that I have every week on Stripping Off, then you're going to love the quick, short business tips, strategies and tactics I give you on no Bollocks. This comes out nearly every day. Make sure you go and check it out on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your content, and I'll see you in a future episode. So talk to me about when you were a child that you had these gender identification issues, which in my research. Obviously I've been reading up on this, but I'll be honest, I still can't quite get my head around what the situation was, and I'm sure for obviously many people listening to this who I've got quite an international audience. So for people who don't know you, I guess we probably all suffer the same issue. Can you explain what actually happened? Because you were born George.
Speaker 1:No, I was actually. When I was born, they knew that I was born deformed and there was a huge dilemma with my parents and the medical profession. I mean, had I been born five years or six years later, there wouldn't have been a problem, because there's a very famous actress who was born with not the same situation but a similar situation, and I'm not going to out her, but she's very famous. Oh, it's not a known thing. Oh well, she has never acknowledged it and I wouldn't acknowledge it. But she was brought up as a girl. But when I was born, just those few years earlier, first of all there were no surgical techniques that became available within a few years and secondly, there weren't all the tests that there became in the 1950s. So you were given the preferred, the superior gender, which was male.
Speaker 2:But when we sort of you know, forgive the, let's say, the graphic questions, but when we talk about the deformity, are you saying that they thought you were born with a penis?
Speaker 1:No, they knew I wasn't, but they also didn't have the means of rectifying, and so they thought I was never going to have the possibility of a fully functional life. So it was preferable to bring me up as a boy, because to be a boy was the superior gender, it was giving me a bit of an edge, because I was going to have no possibilities either way.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I'm not trying to sound stupid here, I'm just trying to get my. But what was the deformity issue? When you say they chose to bring you up as a boy, you mean they knew you were a girl but were the deformity.
Speaker 1:They didn't know what I was. Right, they didn't. They knew I was deformed.
Speaker 2:Because it looked like it was like a deformed penis.
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't, but I'm not going to be more graphic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry, I'm not trying to.
Speaker 1:They knew I wasn't a boy because of, but they also knew that I was deformed and that's just how it was done in those days. I mean, this is 75 years ago now and things were radically different then. But within a few years they understood. But also by then there were surgical techniques and tests available. But I'm not complaining because, you know, in life you have a choice. And I think, instead of thinking, oh, I was really unlucky to have been born, then I think, well, I was lucky because in a few short years they were able to solve the problem.
Speaker 1:So you were brought up as a boy, which may Well, I wasn't really, I was registered because they had to register me as something, and so finally I was registered as a boy, but I was brought up as Georgie. I was never known as anything but Georgie Still am Georgie to my friends and family and I was allowed to develop naturally. So by the time I was three I had my dolls and I was extremely feminine, looking as well, and that was not discouraged. I was allowed to develop as I was naturally.
Speaker 2:When you say develop naturally and you were playing with the dolls, for example, how did that happen in practice? Because I guess you were three years old, you didn't know any different. You didn't go daddy, please go and get me a doll, I mean the, the doll. I mean, did they give you race cars there and dolls there and you decided to gravitate towards the dolls? Or were they? Because, I guess, if you were a boy, if you were an actual, real boy, and all you ever knew was to be given dolls, you'd still think it was normal to play with a doll, wouldn't you? I mean, I guess, do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Well, you're going back to when I don't really remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what I mean is I assume you were only given dolls to play with because you were Georgie.
Speaker 1:No, I was given dolls to play with because I wanted dolls, and then I was very adept with my fingers. So my mother taught me to embroider when I was about five and by the time I was six I was making dolls clothes for my dolls time. I was six, I was making dolls clothes for my dolls, and my father I mean, we were in families like ours, you know, the servants brought you up. We had our nurses. They weren't called nannies in those days, they were called nurses and you had the nurses who then had nursemaids, and so we were effectively brought up by staff and they were under strict instructions with all of us, never to discipline us, never to slap us. They could tell us no, daddy, and mommy said you mustn't do that, but they couldn't touch us or anything like that. Mummy said you mustn't do that, but they couldn't touch us or anything like that.
Speaker 1:And they were brought up to. They were there to facilitate whatever we wanted and to take care of us. And I had a certain amount of interaction with my mother, but practically none with my father. In those days, fathers were pretty distant beings, so to speak. I mean, you would say hello daddy, goodbye daddy, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:It was literally as minimal as that. I was going to ask you, when a family like yours is looked after by the staff, how much interaction do the parents have?
Speaker 1:Well, I had practically none with my father. My brother had practically none with my father. My younger sister had quite a lot with my father until my youngest sister was born. Then she had absolutely none of any consequence and my youngest sister had a degree of interaction with him. My youngest sister didn't have a conversation with my mother until she was in her 50s no, late 40s, late 40s. My other sister disliked my mother intensely and mummy disliked her. My mother disliked my brother and he disliked her intensely until he was grown up?
Speaker 2:And how were the relationships with the nurses and the nursemaids? Because I guess if they're spending all their time with you and vice versa, you must develop that parental affinity to them, do you? Well, I don't know about parental but we certainly knew who I would be.
Speaker 1:But yeah, loving, but my mother, who was extremely jealous.
Speaker 2:Of the relationship.
Speaker 1:Well, she was jealous of everybody and everything, and as soon as we became too fond of the latest nanny she got rid of. So our childhood was trauma after trauma in terms of oh no, please, we love her, blah, blah, blah. So she quickly learned to just get rid of them, and then we discover they weren't there. So so, which I mean, you could say it was psychologically damaging, but you could also say it made us flexible, you know, did you notice in your younger years how that lack of parental relationship was affecting you?
Speaker 2:or was it not until later life that you I guess you really noticed that? That void's there because you don't know any different.
Speaker 1:Well, actually I don't think we had a lack of parental relationship. Believe it or not, we may have had no immediate connection with them, but I did with my mother because I was mummy's favourite, because mummy had figured out from she. I was very young and I looked like her and I sounded like her. My father could never tell the difference on the phone between us and she trained me up to really be Princess Beatrice to her Queen Victoria, which caused huge problems for me later on, but practical problems because my mother didn't want my situation resolved, because she wanted to keep me as her perennial audience, which my father is the one who, before he died, actually tipped me the wink where that was concerned, which was very naughty of her, with the wink where that was concerned, which was very naughty of her.
Speaker 1:But we, so I started, you know, we were brought up with the because the servants had to implement our parents' wishes at all times and if they didn't they would be got rid of. So they were assiduous in following the rules and so we had a lot of parental input, even though we had little interaction with them personally. So we never felt that we were deprived of parental influence. On the contrary, we felt that we had rather too much oppressive parental felt that we had rather too much oppressive parental guidelines and influence. So it's a different way of life and also it's a different world. Nowadays, everybody's parents, even very grand people by and large. They have far more interaction with their children than in my day. Why did it change? Lack of staff, different way of life? Oh, and I think people discovered that they actually liked their children and also, but I think also the way of life was different and and I mean now you know different.
Speaker 2:you know, looking back all those years, Do you wish it was different? Do you wish there was less staff and more parents? Not at all.
Speaker 1:Thank God for the servants, my brother used to say to people. Because Mickey said I'm positively in favour of black people Because the servants loved us and Daddy and Mummy didn't. So no, we certainly didn't want any more input from Daddy and Mummy. Thank you very much. We could have done with a lot less.
Speaker 2:So you said that when you were 12, around when you were 12, you couldn't wait to leave Jamaica, but it wasn't until you were 18 that you did manage to leave. Is that right?
Speaker 1:Yes, well when I, as puberty was kicking in. You see, up until puberty, every child is basically new to gender. I mean, they gravitate to one or the other, but it's when the hormones kick in, which, to me, is what makes some of what's going on with, in my opinion, polluting the minds of young people with pre-maturation input, where children are being made aware of things that nature did not equip them to be aware of. And my own experience is that until the hormones kick in at puberty, basically sex isn't an issue, actual pokey pokey sex. So that means the other word of sex isn't that much of an issue. It's once that kicks in that it all becomes an issue. And then I start. I was. You know what on earth is going on. Why is this happening?
Speaker 1:And I was so hemmed in that, and because we were brought up to never challenge our parents and whatever the rules were, we had to slavishly abide by them unquestioningly. And it took a while for me to well to work up the courage really to approach an adult and my grandfather, my mother's official father whether he was her father or not is beside the point and we were all very close to Grandpa and we were actually close to my mother's mother as well. My father's parents by this time were dead, but we were close generally to the family. We came from a large family on all sides of it and everybody loved everybody else and they have great chaos as well, but genuine affection. But who to turn to? And I figured out the only person who was accessible and who had any influence would be Grandpa, and I brought up this subject slightly the night before he was murdered and he was murdered the following night. So that caused threw me for a loop, but it threw everybody else in the family for a bigger loop in another way.
Speaker 2:Are you saying there was a connection between the conversation and the murder? Of course not.
Speaker 1:No, he was just coincidentally murdered the following night and in fact his murderer hanged eventually. But at the time it was a huge thing because in 1963, it was very unusual for there to be murders of Jamaicans of our kind. I don't think there'd been a murder of a white Jamaican since the 1920s and that had been the Alexander murder, in which the, his wife and her lover had got rid of the husband. And why was he murdered? He was murdered because a thief killed him.
Speaker 2:It was accident's the wrong word, but it was a robbery gone wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, so that's anyway that delayed my. So I then figured out who do I, but who do I turn to? To return to the theme of the question he, I, and there was no one else I could speak to that I thought of that would have the influence. So I went and saw my mother's gynecologist and he was horrified. He took one look at me and he was horrified at the way I was being brought up. And the next thing I knew was I was hospitalized, taken out of his care and put in the care of two German doctors called Dr and Dr Stamm. This is still in Jamaica, in Jamaica, and she was a psychiatrist and he was an internist. And I'm going to skip over this because it's too upsetting, so I'll just say briefly he was an internist and she was a psychiatrist and she decided she was going to break me. I think a lot of her motivation was power, but some of it was money.
Speaker 2:When you say break you, you're psychologically upset.
Speaker 1:She took the view which my father, I'm sure, was delighted with and might even have fed into her, because he didn't want a scandal, because we were one of the most famous families in the country and he cared very greatly about public opinion. And also, you see, my father was an emigre, he was from an emigre family, so I think that sort of thing mattered to him more than it did, say, to my grandmother, my mother's mother, because when she found out she put her foot down and that's how the whole farce came to an end eventually. But so he anyway, I was put in, I was hospitalized, shot up with male hormones, and that's the husband. But the wife she was, she set out to rape me and her thing was well. It's a matter of discipline and any child who resists the way they're being brought up is a rebellious child who needs to have their will broken. And that basically was it.
Speaker 1:It was terrible, I have to say, and, ironically enough, on my channel the subject came up a few weeks ago and I mentioned Dr and Dr Stam and how much I loathed them, especially her because I knew she was a sadist because of our interaction, and someone else who had been abused by her as well and she said she was younger than I was and I was 13.
Speaker 1:But she said that Dr Stamm hospitalized her, shot her full of tranquilizers, et cetera, and then encouraged her mother to board her out at the age of seven. So Dr Stamm was a real piece of work and it's. But you know, when she died and mummy told me oh, you know, dr St, dr stam died, I said I, and she said and she died very painfully of cancer. I said good, I said it shows god exists. She said oh, don't be, because my mother never missed an opportunity to correct you. She said oh, don't be like that. Blah, blah, blah. I said the woman was an absolute bitch and she deserved to die as painfully as possible and I'm glad to see that God made her catch up with herself.
Speaker 2:And so how did you come through the treatment process? Did you see other doctors after the two?
Speaker 1:I realised. Well, I was hospitalised and it was made absolutely clear to me that I was never going to be released from the hospital until I gave, until I agreed that I was going to stop demanding that I be stopped being brought up as a boy. So when I and at first I resisted it and she used to knock me out and give me shock treatment, insulin shock treatment, but also I didn't know that I was also being shot up with male hormones until I started to see the physical effect of it in the mirror. And then I asked one of the nurses why, and she said, oh, and she explained to me. I thought I'm really well and truly trapped. I'd better get out of here as quickly as possible. And then I started to collude with her, ostensibly to get out of the hospital.
Speaker 2:And you say, yes, I'm a boy, I'm going to carry on being started to collude with her, ostensibly to get out of the hospital. And you say, yes, I'm a boy.
Speaker 1:I'm going to carry on being Well. I couldn't have said I'm a boy, because that would have been ridiculous.
Speaker 1:No, but oh well, yes you know, maybe I should give it a try. Blah, blah, blah, da da da. And yes, of course I'm going to keep on going to the other doctors, sam, and yes, I'll get those lovely injections that are going to make me very masculine. Blah, blah, blah to just get out of the hospital. Of misunderstanding the family dynamics, because my father was 11 years older than my mother and he was the one with the money.
Speaker 1:She stupidly went with him, thinking he was the power and in fact mummy was the power. And she banned mummy from coming to the hospital because I was getting increasingly distressed by what was going on and complaining to Mummy, and Mummy had started to complain to her, and so she said that Mummy was going to undermine the process and banned Mummy from the hospital. And I remember one day Mummy arrived and the nurses called the doctors, who called the henchmen. I mean, believe me, in Jamaica in those days they didn't dare touch someone like my mother. And they did. She was beyond furious, as they frog marched her out of the hospital, huge row in the corridor. But that was my ticket to freedom as well.
Speaker 2:So how long did you stay in the hospital before you got out?
Speaker 1:Rather longer than I'd like to see the whole thing was. It was torture, it was literal torture, but you know, one doesn't want to believe at the point, and I'm certainly not wallowing.
Speaker 2:And you came home at that point and towed the line until you could escape.
Speaker 1:Well, also, I'd been also not only shot up with hormones but I'd been given lots of insulin shock. So I was definitely not myself. I was deadened. Now, deadened is the wrong word I was. It was like I was doped up, except I wasn't doped up but I wasn't myself for some considerable length of time afterwards, at least months, and then gradually you just sort of got over it and I stopped taking the male hormones and I refused to go to both Dr Stams ever again, and mummy backed me up because female Dr Stam had made the mistake of crossing her. The one thing mummy never forgave was anybody who crossed her.
Speaker 1:Thank God in that instance.
Speaker 2:And so what age were you or where were you when you managed to ultimately get the surgery and get what you needed?
Speaker 1:I was 21 when I got it.
Speaker 2:You'd moved to America at that point.
Speaker 1:I went to the Fashion Institute at 18. And incredibly because in families like ours people didn't have personal conversations my grandmother had no idea what had been going on for the previous years. She knew I was very girlish. I mean, people commented on my looks because I was very attractive in a very feminine way, but she just thought I was girlish. She didn't give it any thought beyond that and she had nobody had told her.
Speaker 1:My aunt, my mother's elder sister, who knew of the situation, assumed that she knew and they never mentioned it to each other and she had no idea. I mean, the whole thing was in families like ours, I mean, you'd speak about anybody but never about yourself personally. And she found out when I was 20, my aunt told her and she was horrified and she said this has got to come to an end and she's the one. And she phoned me and asked me to come down to her house, which I did, and she said buddy boots, which is what she called us when she was being affectionate. She said booty boots, I've heard. She said I have to tell you I had no idea and of course you are going to have everything sorted out and I'm going to pay for it and but that was a great relief to me.
Speaker 1:And then my aunt said she wanted to show solidarity, so she kicking something extra. And then my mother, ever competitive, decided well, since they were both good and the whole thing was inevitable, she would kicking a little bit of it and then proceeded. When we were in New York, because by then there was so much money extra, she promptly went to Belensky the diamond dealers in New York with my guardian at school, francis Bacall, and bought a diamond watch and her 15th diamond engagement ring with the money which I've got the diamond watch. When she died I said to my sisters. I said, and this is not a part of the spoils. I said this was bought with my money and I never forgave mummy for that.
Speaker 2:Anyway, but there was still presumably enough money left to be able to get done what you needed to get done. Oh, this is after everything was done.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, yeah, because and my mother, incredibly enough, is something I sort of struggled with over the years, mummy, quite seriously, and I wondered for years until quite recently I figured out what I think the reason is she. She said to me. She said you know, why don't you go to Sidney Williams, who was the Jamaican plastic surgeon? She said, and you know, then, you don't need to waste your money or the money. She wouldn't have said your money, you don't need to waste your money or the money. She wouldn't have said your money, you don't need to waste the money. And I said, excuse me, I'm going to somebody who is expert in the field. I'm not. You know, putting myself in the hands of Sidney Williams would never have done anything like this. I finally the penny dropped the other day. She was hoping the whole procedure would fail. She was quite determined to keep me as her pair of heirs. Anyway, I ignored her by then, and then I went to New York on my own and my guardian is the one who saw me through the whole process and but then I had, by then I had developed.
Speaker 1:I was so anxious that I had developed a condition where it's not anorexia, but my throat would seal every time I tried to swallow. And my brother-in-law, who's a doctor. He said you just eat chocolate. He said just eat chocolate. He said just eat ice cream. He said it will. Eventually it was extreme anxiety. He said just eat ice cream, it slithers down your throat, you don't need to swallow. And I lived on ice cream for months. But after the operation and everything was sorted out, the surgeon refused to release me from the hospital on accepting the care of my mother or father. But my father wasn't going to come. He was a busy man. So mummy had to come up to New York and that's when she decided to seize the money and go to Belensky and buy diamonds with it. My mother was a piece of work, let me tell you Very naughty woman.
Speaker 2:So, as someone who's experienced everything you've experienced. What's your views on the gender and transitioning issues of today? And I guess yours is the reverse situation that you wanted to be identified as what you were, what you really should have been, versus, obviously, most of what I would say is most of today's issues where somebody wants to identify as something other than what they were. And you know, obviously it's getting younger and younger and younger, and you know, obviously it's getting younger and younger and younger.
Speaker 1:I think my situation is apropos of it in some ways, because I've given a lot of thought recently to the whole issue and it's not going to make me very popular what I have to say, but I think what I'm saying is true and fair. I think, first of all, until puberty a child is not capable of having achieved a maturation point. Naturally, I think interfering with the natural turmoil of childhood is dangerous. I mean, my sister, phoebe, was far more of a tomboy than I was. She and Mickey used to ride their bikes and do bike races and climb trees, and I was never like that, but she was and nobody thought she wanted to be a boy. You know, and I think it is very unhealthy to have experts tampering with the minds of children who don't yet naturally arrive at a conclusion.
Speaker 1:And my own take on the whole subject is putting aside the genuine aspects of intersexuality, which are very identifiable where a girl presents as a boy or, you know, putting aside all of that, which is very obvious, I suspect and I could be wrong, but I suspect that transsexualism is most likely the most extreme form of intersexuality and we do not yet have the medical knowledge to spot where things go wrong. I mean, you only need to look at somebody like Caitlyn Jenner to see that there definitely was always a problem, notwithstanding the fact that Bruce Jenner was the most absolutely beautiful man and, in every way, the archetype of masculinity. So there's obviously something biological going on there and I think people get caught up, without understanding, with chromosomes, ketosteroids, bloody, bloody blah. They get caught up with the minutiae and we don't know enough. But I would say that anybody who is genuinely transsexual will ultimately aim for that.
Speaker 1:But if you try to get a child who is, in my opinion, polluting the child's thought processes before they have arrived at that conclusion themselves with oh, it's a possibility you get girlish boys deciding this and then, oh well, maybe I should be a boy. And then, oh well, maybe I should be a boy, maybe I should be a boy. Well, no, no, these are the experts need to keep out of children's heads, and I think they should be allowed to develop naturally, and then the medical profession should listen to the child, but only after a certain point why do you think it is that that the age of children being able to consent for some of these things themselves is is as young as it is, or or getting or getting younger when they don't allow that?
Speaker 2:for you know, I mean I've got a daughter who's just turned 18. I mean she's needed, needed my permission up until last week to be able to get a filling in her tooth. But you know, kids half their age are allowed to consent themselves on hormone treatments, but it's not only that aspect of it that's so dangerous.
Speaker 1:Children can get birth control, so you are liable for your child till it's 18. It's legally a child. You can get into trouble for sexual interference with the minor which is qualified legally as a child. However, that child can do it. The whole system is crazy. It's illogical. We are slaves to fashion.
Speaker 2:What do you think the agenda behind I guess behind allowing them to do it is? Is it just part of a fashion wokeness that it feels the thing of the moment?
Speaker 1:Well, it's difficult to put yourself into the shoes of every individual who has a bizarre opinion or even a good opinion, but I would imagine that some of them are humane but misguided and others are power trippers. You know, I had a wonderful therapist called Basil Panzer who used to warn against the dangers of the caring professions. He used to say in his opinion the caring professions attracted more psychopaths and sociopaths relative to the population than any other profession. That he knew of cases where psychiatrists, psychologists, had willfully destroyed the lives of people to give themselves a buzz. So I think that sometimes it's malevolence but often it's misguided benevolence.
Speaker 1:And you know, one of the things that in my situation happened was that when I was 17, by then I was in full rebellion against the way I was being brought up and I had read in Time magazine about the gender identification clinic in Baltimore. It was headed up by Dr John Money, who is notorious in the field now, and I knew that if I could get to the board to the Johns Hopkins Gender Identification Clinic, my parents would have to stop bringing me up as a boy, because by then it was an open secret that I wasn't. I didn't look as if I was. Nobody thought I was. People didn't know what the hell was going on, but they knew I definitely was not, certainly a regular boy. I think some people thought I was going to change my sex or wanted to change my sex, but people who knew me well knew that of the situation and I mean it was just great. But my father was no, no, no, we can't have this because I don't want a scandal. He was horrified, terrified of newspaper scandals and, ironically enough, when it came he was wonderful, because when he did come which it came in 1974, he was marvellous. He said well, you never killed anybody, you never stole from anybody. Hold your head up high and tell everybody to just bugger off. So he was great when it happened. But till it happened, he was.
Speaker 1:But I wanted to go to the gender identification clinic and I insisted and my mother, who I didn't realize, actually didn't want a solution to the problem, she led me to believe she wanted one and daddy was the hitch, so to speak, and it turned out she was also. But I didn't know that and she and I insisted and I and I demanded and I was taken to a very fashionable society doctor who made the plans and then mummy. Mummy told me oh actually, and this was just before I was going to school in New York, so I was going to go to Baltimore, then to New York, because I didn't want to go to FIT as what I called a newt agenda, I wanted to go as myself. I wanted to go as myself and mummy said oh, doctor, she called me outside one day and she said oh, you know, I have to tell you, you can't, you're not going to Baltimore. Doctor, money has turned you down. And I always thought she was lying because I knew that she and daddy were moving. Well, daddy was, but she would be his messenger and I thought it was a lie. And it was only last year that I realized that actually, maybe she wasn't lying because Dr John Money, at the same time that this was going on, had a notorious case called the John-Joan case, which were two Canadian identical twins, one of whose penis had been severed in a circumcision gone wrong, and he had embarked upon the experiment.
Speaker 1:He believed that gender was something that was societally imposed and that anybody could be brought up to be any gender, irrespective of their natural propensities or their natural condition.
Speaker 1:And he had just happened upon those children and he was embarked upon this experiment, which ultimately ended in disaster because both those children committed suicide. It's a very notorious case and I, last year, I think somebody said something to me because you know, the public have a degree of access to me via my YouTube channel and my agents and somebody said something that set off this awareness that Dr Money, at the same time that he was telling me no, was embarking upon this whole business with the John Joanna case, embarking upon this whole business with the John Joanna case, and he understood that if he had accepted me as a patient, that meant that the John Joanna case had to be wrong. The hypothesis was fallacious because I was a living proof that gender is not a social construct, that awareness of gender is something that you're born with and that you can't ultimately alter it, which is why it is so dangerous when you have experts with children getting in there before the children have arrived at the realisation of what their true gender is.
Speaker 2:Let's take a change of direction and we're going to talk about your books and about your particularly the royal biographies, connections to the royals, etc. Just set the scene for me on that in how you are connected with the royal biographies, connections to the royals, etc. Just set the scene for me on that in how you are connected with the royal family. I think there's a distant relationship somewhere, isn't there?
Speaker 1:Well, more than one. I suppose you would say In my world you ran across everybody of consequence, because everybody of consequence went to Jamaica in those days Jamaica was the world's leading winter colony from the late 40s to the mid-70s. Princess Alice, who was Queen Victoria's granddaughter she was born Princess Alice of Albany Then she married Queen Mary's brother, prince Alexander of Teck Prince Alexander of Teck and then, when he was de-royalized in 1917, she became Princess Alice, countess of Aslone. She lived in Jamaica for six months of every year. So she was the first of the royals that I met.
Speaker 1:But you just ran across people, I mean it's you know socially, and in those days A lot of the royals would go to Jamaica to visit or to play polo or blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:And so that was one connection I suppose you could say. Another one was that my father and they have some ancestors in common, very far back, because they're all descended from William the Conqueror. But that's really far back, so it's not really of any consequence. And then I married Lord Colin Campbell, who was the son of the 11th Duke of Argyll, and the 9th Duchess of Argyll was Princess Louise, who was Queen Victoria's daughter. But that really made very little difference to my life in terms of the people I knew, because I already knew the people that I knew from before and that I met afterwards and I was only with my ex-husband for 14 years in total. So I suppose you'd say my connections are my own and really have nothing to do with him. In fact, it's through my own connections that I got to meet him because I was staying with his sister in New York as a house guest. She had a house in Jamaica.
Speaker 2:And how did you get into the book writing? What made you decide to want to do it?
Speaker 1:Well, when I was 18 and I went to school in New York, I went to the Fashion Institute to study dress designing and it was so boring, I cannot tell you, and also the dramas, the way people carried on. It was like the world was going to die and everybody would fall off the face of this earth If you got the fact that Hemsworth were going to rise or fall by an inch. And I at the time was actually experiencing very genuine existential struggles. So to me the idea of whether a hem rose or fell by an inch was pointless and meaningless. So I was so bored I walked out. At the end of the first term I thought this is dire, and at the beginning of the second term I thought I can't face this and I walked out and decided I was going to write instead.
Speaker 1:Now my father's family have produced one or two very well-established writers. My father's cousin, may Ziadi, is the Jane Austen of the Middle East, because I'm part Lebanese, and his nephew, tony Winkler, was also a very well-known writer, and so I think it runs in the family, it says, and I have cousins who write for the pleasure of it and others who are artists for the pleasure of it. And so I decided. But then I went and interviewed a male model. My first article was on the male model, which was quite unusual in 1968. So at the agency they said oh, you're blah, blah, blah, and you know, new Yorkers sing your praises to the sky. And they said why don't you model? So I thought, well, why not? So I chucked writing and started to model. Then my father found out and yanked me back to Jamaica and insisted I finished FIT, which I did, and then I set about the serious business, after my problems were sorted out, of fulfilling my duty as a good daughter by getting married suitably, which I did.
Speaker 1:And so that really was my focus. It was the focus of all girls of my generation and background. I mean, either you were a lesbian or you were ugly, or you got married. If you didn't get married, you can depend on it. Your life was not worth living.
Speaker 1:And because I was, much was made of my looks in those days, because I was really quite striking looking and I was very slender, and so people made a huge deal of my looks. So I was always going to be desirable in those terms and also because of my family connections, that made me desirable as well, and the downside of my upbringing didn't really matter in our world, because everybody knew about it and everybody was very compassionate about it and it wasn't public and there was no likelihood of it being public once I'd jumped over the initial hurdle and the newspapers had ignored it deliberately, to be nice, incidentally, they could have run with it, but they didn't. And so then I focused on getting married at once and and then I thought no, so I started to write.
Speaker 1:My first book was called the substance in the shadow. It was a fierce philosophical treatise based. It was really motivated by my mother going insane, uh, and it gave me pause for thought and you know what's real and important and what's on rail and unimportant, and especially in a world where everybody's supposedly so privileged and people are cocking up their lives left, right and center, when you say she went insane as in she went totally barking.
Speaker 1:Now, irrecoverably no, no, unfortunately it wasn't irrecoverable, but we thought it was at the time and she went totally crazy. She was an alcoholic and she she had an alcoholic crisis and the drugs didn't agree with her and I mean, I didn't find out about it for quite a while. My father didn't want me being upset by it until, anyway, and that was the trigger for my first book and I was actually about to get it published when I met and married my husband and then Howard Kaminsky, who was the head of the paperback edition of Warner Books. He wanted to publish it and he said but you know, he said you're known as a society beauty. And he said but you know, he said you're known as a society beauty and society beauty is a big problem. To market a book on such a serious subject. Because you're a society beauty, you've got to have some rationale for having written the book and since you're not a doctor of philosophy, it's got to be your experience. He said so we need to incorporate that. I said absolutely not a chance. I didn't want the publicity. So I pulled the plug on that.
Speaker 1:Then I got divorced and then, several years down the line, I picked up back writing in the mid-'80s, because that was the mid-'70s, and by the mid-'80s I had somebody who I should have married in 1977 and didn't, 1977 and didn't, and then we ended up getting back together and I was waiting for his divorce and so was he, and then I started writing again and since then it's been well. It's been interesting because, although from the time I was very young, I was of course I have a genius IQ and everybody understood in my family and world that I was very bright. So, and anybody who's met me for 20 minutes and isn't an idiot realizes I've got a brain. But you'd be amazed how many people who think they're really intelligent and can't figure out that you've got a brain. But so I think it was.
Speaker 1:It became quite obvious to me that if I was going to succeed as a writer it was not going to be with gravitas, it was going to be with levity, and that you know. I say I'm a B-grade movie star, not an Elizabeth Taylor. So I would have liked to have been taken more seriously intellectually, but it was never going to happen because I was known for my looks and also as a society figure. So right there, too much levity, and there are many people who think if you're well-bred and privileged, you cannot be intelligent and you can't know anything of life.
Speaker 1:Of course, my life has been far more difficult than most other people's, so you would have think even an idiot would have figured out that I do know something about life, but not when you're dealing with media personalities who are very narrow-minded. So I opted for what was available, and what was available was doing worldly things and not weighty things, and I ended up then writing an updated version of my book on philosophy, which was Lady Colin Campbell's Guide to being a Modern Lady, which, believe it or not, is grounded in proper philosophy. But since I wasn't suitable for philosophy, I had to, and then it's been the royals.
Speaker 2:Because you wrote two books about Diana. Yes, you've written some other royal books as well, many so so. So. So when you write those, do you get to use any of your connections?
Speaker 1:absolutely, and this has been a huge problem with, with royal correspondence and that ilk of media personality, because they are scurrying at this level and I get from this level and that's where my background becomes very helpful, because I have, as I've proven time and again, access to information that they don't have access to and it absolutely drives some of them absolutely nuts.
Speaker 2:But how happy so the people that you get the information from? I mean, are they happy to part with this information, knowing it's going to end up in a book?
Speaker 1:Interesting question. When I wrote my first Diana book, I was naive enough to list absolutely everybody.
Speaker 2:All the sources, everybody.
Speaker 1:And everybody was perfectly happy for me to write it. Everybody was perfectly happy to cooperate with me. Then the press got involved, shock, horror. Lady Colin Campbell has said these awful things about the sanctified Diana and people ran for the hills left, right and centre, and so I've never made that mistake again.
Speaker 2:But what were some of the scandals? Because I've not read the book, obviously, but what were some of the scandals around it?
Speaker 1:Well, anything you think Andrew Morton revealed I revealed first. Let's put it that way the only thing that Andrew Morton revealed that I didn't reveal was that, according to him, diana had tried to commit suicide. And Diana never tried to commit suicide, she did grandstand. But everything else her eating disorder, her lover Charles's relationship with Camilla it's all in my book, which was called Down in Private the Princess Nobody Knows and came out months before his book, and in fact I was informed that they waited to see the contents of my book, to see what they would have to address, because Diana knew that she had colluded with me and she, when I would not oblige her by telling lies about the Prince of Wales as he then was. She then went to Morton and he obliged her, and I'm not knocking him for that. You know, don't shoot the messenger. He was just the messenger.
Speaker 2:You've got some very vocal views on Harry and Meghan. Talk to me a little about them.
Speaker 1:Well, that came to me. I mean, in a way that was quite surprising. I had no interest in Harry and Megan. I mean, harry and William and my children used to play at polo together. I mean, they're totally different generations from me. I'm 43 years older than my children and 30-something years older than Harry and William. No interest whatsoever. I mean, you're not interested in people of such a radically different generation.
Speaker 1:And, of course, I knew a little bit of what was going on, but no interest whatsoever. And people came to me and said you know, blah, blah, blah, da da da. You really should think of writing a book. And at some point I realized there was a. Something really significant was going on.
Speaker 1:This was before Harry and Meghan Mexited and Meghan Mexited and I understood that people were coming to me to issue the shot across the bow so that they wouldn't Mex it and not that anybody actually expected them to Mex it, but they wanted to stop her trying to commercialise her royal status and they understood the dangers that were involved. So I was nearly finished the book. I think the deadline was the 14th of February 2019. Would it have been 2019? Whenever it was? And they maxed it in a few weeks before that. So I then had to redo the last bit of the book, and which was very tiresome, but I did. But my book was intended to be a shot across her bow to say you can actually and should actually play ball. You said you wanted to be a team player. Be a team player.
Speaker 1:This is not going to go well for you and indeed it has gone disastrously for them because, rather than becoming the revered figures that they aimed to be and in her fantasy she thought she would be, because, you see, she also has used Diana as a template. I've been told by people who know her well that she studied my book, second book, the Real Diana, like the bible, and has replicated a whole load of stuff from it, pressing Harry's buttons and trying to present herself as the reincarnation of Diana. But she's not the reincarnation of Diana. She doesn't have any of Diana's attributes all of her failings, but none of her attributes. And also, the times are different and you can't replicate someone else's situation.
Speaker 1:And and what she and Harry obviously was too young to and too dumb to realize as well, is that by the time his mother died, she was well on the way to becoming the Zsa, zsa Gabor of the royal family. She, she was mocked, she was excluded. She had worked herself into the status of a pariah and she had started to try to reclaim some of her respectability. And there was the patina of respectability. But she had actually shot herself in the foot, especially over the Martin Bashir interview, where she tried to get Charles effectively removed from the line of succession because Martin Bashir had told her and she was dumb enough to believe him that the Queen was going to abdicate. I mean, everybody in royal circles knows the Queen was never going to abdicate.
Speaker 1:So why Diana would have thought the Queen was going to abdicate when she was her daughter-in-law and she had been brought up on the Sandringham estate is beyond me. But you know, I suppose people who want to believe something will believe it if it suits them, and Diana was that type. Something will believe it if it suits them, and Diana was that type and she thought that William would then be able to become king and she would be regent. I mean madness, absolute madness and overambition. Meghan has tried to create herself as a second Diana and it's been equally unsuccessful.
Speaker 2:Do you think they ever will return to the UK? I hope not.
Speaker 1:I don't believe in making predictions. I'm not a fortune teller.
Speaker 2:How could they recover that position?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's irrecoverable. You know, once you have shown yourself to be disloyal and treacherous and adversarial, it does not behoove any sane person to embrace you again, because the scorpion stings and will sting again. So I don't think there's any prospect of them being re-embraced, and certainly not with her.
Speaker 2:I was going to say not with her. I mean, we're getting very hypothetical here. But if they were no longer together, do you think Harry would have the ability to repair himself? I mean, I guess, no matter how pissed off people may be with him, they'll probably always be that affinity that he was, he's a prince, he's royal, etc. Do you think people can forgive and move on?
Speaker 1:Well, the fact that he's a prince doesn't mean that what he did is forgivable.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. No, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to answer. So his status as prince would actually militate against him. I cannot see him being reincorporated in any meaningful way, shape or form officially, unless he did a total mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I was a drug addict, my brains were blown and so was I, and those blows from Magsie Baby blew my brains further and all so you know, please forgive me, forgive further and all so you know, please forgive me. I can see him reinstated in the most minimal way by a tiny majority of, I should say a tiny minority of the people. Otherwise, no, I think he's blown it, he's out. I cannot see him being valuably reincorporated. He's too untrustworthy. And yes, if he admits to having been under the influence of drugs and tries to shift it off to them, I can see him making the tiniest degree of comeback. But it will always be time. I think it's over, it's done with, you know.
Speaker 1:And also, the royal family is sufficiently astute. Many of them have had therapy. William has had therapy, charles has had therapy, princess Margaret had therapy, the Queen had therapy. I mean, it's all in my books. You know, prince Philip's aunt was Mary Bonaparte, who was one of the two female psychoanalysts trained by Freud. The other was his daughter, anna Freud. I mean, they come from a very psychologically sophisticated background. People seem to think that because they're royal, they've never heard of the word psychology. It's absolutely not true. So to think that Harry is going to get into therapy and all of a sudden they're going to give him a free pass it's not going to happen. They are too sophisticated and too knowledgeable about the issues involved. I really think it's over.
Speaker 2:What are you up to at the moment and what have we got to look forward to in the future? I know you've been. You've been busy buying and renovating a castle, haven't you?
Speaker 1:Yes, well, I bought it 10 years ago now and it's. Where is it? It's between Worthing and Arundel, three miles from the coast in West Sussex. It's very beautiful. It's called Castle Goring, you should Google it.
Speaker 2:What was it before? Obviously, it was always a castle. But was someone living in it or was it derelict?
Speaker 1:Before I had it it was a language school because in the Second World War it was requisitioned by the army and billeted to the Canadians who damaged it severely. So when I got it the ground floor was and had been a ruin since the Second World War and it was owned by the Somerset family. They still own the Castle Goring estate and they're lovely. So I did it up and we have weddings there and events and I keep the prices relatively modest so that the local community can afford access to it. And it's very beautiful.
Speaker 1:It was built by Sir Bysshe Shelley, the poet's grandfather, and Mary, who wrote Frankenstein. She inherited it and she couldn't afford to keep it up, so she leased it for 20 years to Sir George Peachell, who was Queen Victoria's equerry, and when she couldn't maintain it still, she sold it to him. So then the Pitchell, his daughter, married one of the Somersets, a famous cricketer called Alfred Somerset, and it's beautiful. It's unique architecturally because it's the only built, the very first building in the world that was built with two totally different facades. The north face is Gothic and a replicate of Arundel Castle as it was in the 1790s, and the south face is Greco-Roman, so it's like two completely different houses.
Speaker 2:Do you spend much time yourself there? Oh, yes, okay, yeah yeah, it's beautiful and what about the future? What have we got to look forward to next? You're a lady of many projects and much busyness got to look forward to.
Speaker 1:Next, you're a lady of many projects and much busyness. Well, I do my YouTube channel, which is very demanding time-wise, as I'm sure you will realise from this. I can agree to that. Then I just do my life generally and I do occasional television things. I used to do GB News twice a week when Dan Wooten was on it, and now I do it very occasionally with Nona Akwe. But I do Dan Wooten now. Still, I followed him because I love Dan and I think he's a great guy and I think what happened with him was a total disgrace and should never have happened. I think we live in very interesting and ominous times, but the world has always been interesting and ominous at the same time. You know, there's nothing unique about our ominous times, except that, because of the internet and because of all the advances that we have made, some of which are marvellous, I think everything is more immediate and everything is more dangerous and more you know. But I'm hopeful I'm always hopeful better than the alternative.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well listen. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for sharing, sharing the stories and uh and uh. I guess you know we could do this for hours and hours and I hope we'll get together again at some point in the future for a round two and uh and dig into some other things we never got a chance to talk about. But uh, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Well, it's been my Thank you, thank you All good.
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