She bewitched Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Elvis Presley and INXS frontman Michael Hutchence.
And at the age of 78, April Ashley still has the power to stop men in their tracks.
But the first Briton to have full sex-change surgery admits to an unusual crush.
She always fancied Labour’s ex-deputy Prime Minister, her old friend John Prescott.
“We worked together in the 1950s,” she explains. “He was a commis chef and I was in charge of the bar and restaurant.
"He was incredibly nice and very, very handsome, like a young Marlon Brando. He was a sweet, shy, very elegant young man.
"I can see why his wife Pauline fell for him. He was more than dapper– he was strapping. He was just a lovely young man.”
Over the years April and John, now Lord Prescott, have kept in touch.
But they had not seen each other for many years before he opened an exhibition of photos covering her extraordinary life this week.
“I am so touched that John came to open the exhibition,” she says.
Speaking of the incident when her old pal thumped an egg-throwing protestor, she reveals: “I was dying to tell him that if someone threw an egg at me I would have decked them too. But I’d have done it with my handbag!”
Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror
April’s still-elegant appearance in her late 70s gives no clue to the struggles of her early life when she was born as George Jamieson in the slums of Liverpool.
“It was a tough life at the beginning, very tough indeed,” she says. “I couldn’t tell anyone I felt I should have been born a girl.
“My mother wouldn’t speak to me. When I would go shopping with her, people would say to her ‘What is it?’ My brothers and sisters wouldn’t speak to me.
“I was brought up a strict Roman Catholic so I would talk to God all the time and beg to wake up as a girl.”
At 14 George ran away to join the Merchant Navy, trying to prove his masculinity. But what followed were years of soul-searching, suicide bids, and even electric shock treatment in a mental hospital.
At 20, after working in a Welsh hotel with John Prescott, she moved to Paris– and became April. She was the compere of a drag club, Le Carrousel, and won the attention of famous men.
Artists Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso wanted her as their muse, and Elvis Presley bought her champagne every time he saw her.
April recalls: “Elvis was divine. He was stationed in Germany doing his service, but he hated Germany so he flew to Paris every weekend.
"He deflowered about 40 Bluebell girls at the Paris Lido.
“Elvis suddenly took a great shine to me but his manager Col Parker found out about me and forbade him from having anything to do with me.
"But we would be in the same club every weekend and he sent me a bottle of champagne every time.”
Dali visited the Carrousel every night for three weeks trying to persuade April to pose for him.
“He was this man with a crazy moustache, and crazy eyes, but I liked him,” she says. “But being a strict Roman Catholic, very young and very shy, I refused.”
She wasn’t at all impressed by Picasso.
“He would look you up and down and strip you with his eyes,” she says.
So did he want to paint April, or have sex with her?
“Both,” she says with a wicked laugh. “He was a dirty old man.”
Then in 1960 another star of Le Carrousel went to Casablanca to have sex-change surgery.
At 25, April realised that her dream of becoming a woman could come true.
The surgeon was Dr Georges Burou, the French gynaecologist who invented gender reassignment surgery.
After saving up the £3,000 she needed – equivalent to £60,000 today – April went to Casablanca too.
“Dr Burou said, ‘How come a beautiful girl like you wants to be a boy?’ I put my passport in front of him and he couldn’t believe it.
"He said come in tonight and we will do the operation tomorrow. No nonsense, no psychiatrists.”
Despite the risks of the seven-hour operation she was not scared.
“I didn’t want to live if I wasn’t a woman. I promised myself I would get to the age of 25 and if I hadn’t achieved it by then, I’d kill myself.”
She adds “I was one of Dr Burou’s guinea pigs. He was quite plain about that. I had to sign forms in case I died, and I almost did. I lost all my hair and I was desperately ill.”
Ken Walker
After recuperating in Casablanca, she moved to London. It was the Swinging 60s and she was was quick to embrace it.
She admits: “It was a very promiscuous time.”
Her past unknown, April became Vogue’s most popular underwear model and beat 400 other girls to win a role alongside Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in their film The Road to Hong Kong. But in 1961 a friend told the world her secret.
“I would have had a good career had it all not come out. I didn’t get much work after that. Nobody would employ me.”
At 50 she moved to America and took jobs as a waitress or a hostess. But when her past caught up the jobs disappeared.
April has been married twice and says that on a trip to Australia in 1982 she was seduced by Michael Hutchence of INXS.
“He came in to my hotel with his entourage an asked if I would like to go to his room for a bottle of champagne.
"So I went up and he was the most beautiful man, so elegant. We had a lovely night together.”
Rex
It was not until the Gender Recognition Act became law in 2005 that she was legally recognised as female and given a new birth certificate.
She returned to Britain and in 2012 she was awarded an MBE for services to transgender equality and her work with arts group Homotopia, based in Liverpool.
And this week she was back in her home town for the opening of her exhibition.
For someone with such a remarkable history she is refreshingly modest.
“I was always astonished that wherever I went people wanted to meet me,” she says.
“I would always be in a quiet corner at parties then after a few drinks people would be queueing up.
“Still, it hasn’t been an easy life. You have to be resilient. You can’t let people crush you.”
April Ashley: Portrait of a Lady is at the Museum of Liverpool until September 21 next year.
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