The Country Town that Has Been Invaded by Transvestites

LIPHOOK, UNITED KINGDOM – For centuries, it has been a bustling little community that always boasted a warm welcome for unexpected visitors.

Queen Victoria stayed here once on her way to the south coast from London, and Lord Nelson is said to have spent a comfortable night at the local coaching inn with Lady Hamilton.

But the good folk of Liphook were raising eyebrows yesterday at their latest guests – a gathering of transvestites.

Fabuliss – ‘where boys are girls’, as the group literature chooses to phrase it – has been hiring the Hampshire parish’s community centre after advertising cabaret nights, fashion shows, dressing-up sessions and girly deportment classes.

On selected evenings for the past few months, lavishly-dressed figures have been seen emerging gingerly from expensive cars or click-clacking in stiletto heels across the nearby Sainsbury’s car park to join like minded ‘TVs’ in the Millennium Hall.

While St John Ambulance cadets meet in one part of the building, Fabuliss occupies a private room in the other. But suspicions were raised after one local resident noticed that many of the ladies seemed to be uncommonly tall, and speaking in rather deep voices.

Then someone noticed that staff at the hall – which accepted the bookings under the heading of ‘gathering of friends’ – had received a Christmas card from Fabuliss to thank them for their hospitality.

A quick visit to the group’s website, which pictures the organisers with a hardcore transsexual porn star, suggested the ‘friends’ might not be all they seemed.

Now Bramshott and Liphook parish council, which is responsible for the hall, is facing a simmering rebellion from those who prefer to accommodate more traditional meetings, currently including a bridge club, amateur dramatic society, Pilates nights and Age Concern events.

But in a cross-party boost for the crossdresser parties, this week’s Labour-chaired council meeting elected as its new vice chairman a Tory whose ‘TV friendly’ guest house (and he’s not talking about flatscreens, by the way) has been advertised on the Fabuliss website.

His wife Eve, an East Hampshire district council member, is the area’s ‘Lead Councillor for Equality and Diversity’.

So just how did Liphook – famed for its annual carnival and dedication to Liphook in Bloom – become a hotbed for ‘trannies’ from various parts of the country?

Sashay forward Linda and Natasha Bryant, the founders of Fabuliss. The name is an amalgam of fabulous; and the village of Liss, which they live near. The electoral roll doesn’t mention a Natasha but it does list someone called Mark.

Lest there be any confusion, Linda is described on the website as ‘all woman’. She is the creative force behind Fabuliss and ‘has a great eye for all things beautiful’.

Natasha, it says, is ‘gorgeous and demure but with a wicked sense of humour’.

All harmless fun? Probably so. But what has concerned some locals is that both are pictured cosying up to Alison Dale, a 6ft 2in ‘pre- op transsexual’ whose own website (‘the home of hardcore transsexual porn’) raises the startling question that there could be far more to this TV malarkey than Fabuliss’s ‘strictly non-sexual’ burlesque and beauty nights.

Neither Miss nor Mr Dale (her website poses leave no doubt that she is both) has ever attended a Liphook meeting – Fabuliss was merely planning to invite her to judge a beauty contest.

Yesterday Millennium Hall founding chairman Major Frank Conroy, 77, complained: ‘It’s nothing more than an act of desecration. They are holding parties in the Canada Room, which celebrates Liphook’s links with Canadians stationed here during two world wars.’

A disgruntled villager added: ‘I don’t think this is an appropriate use of the Millennium Hall in an area where we still put a value on traditional family life.

‘Parents were dropping their children off for a Scout meeting when these people started tottering out of their Mercs and BMWs in wigs and make-up.

‘I can’t imagine what they were doing inside, but at one point, one of the walls seems to have been covered in a display of flouncy dresses and frilly knickers.’

‘Actually they were basques,’ Linda Bryant explained after offering me tea at the home she shares with cross-dressing husband Mark, aka Natasha Fabuliss (Miss).

‘We don’t all trolley around Liphook in our knickers. In fact we have a strict dress code – nothing indecent.

‘We just have nice quiet evenings together. There’s no sleaze or sexual element whatsoever. Of course I know there are seedy sides to other types of transvestite but we don’t approve of it, and we don’t encourage it.’

Guests at the gatherings include a psychoanalyst, a chauffeur, a soldier and a coach builder. Many are aged 40 plus. Linda, a chiropractic receptionist, agrees with Mark that ‘some can look pretty gruesome’.

She adds: ‘They walk like dockers – hence the deportment lessons.’

The couple have five children between them from previous marriages, and seven grandchildren.

Mark, who runs a parcel delivery business with his wife, became a ‘tranny’ years ago and enjoys the ‘illusion of transformation’.

‘We only started organising the meetings because there was nowhere else like it around here.

‘We don’t run a pick-up joint or a knocking shop. It’s just a gathering of friends. We’d be delighted to invite the parish council to come along and join us if they want to.’

The council had not known the nature of the meetings, said clerk Tony Groves.

But it would now investigate whether there was any ‘conflict of interest’, and determine ‘if ‘safeguards’ were needed.

Courtesy Daily Mail: United Kingdom