Here’s the BBC slobbering over Paris Lees in 2013:

The annual Pink List named Paris Lees as the most influential lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender figure in the UK. But her rise from being a “silly teenage boy in a prison cell” has been far from simple.

Huh. The “silly teenage boy in a prison cell” makes it sound so cute, but the reason he was in a prison cell was because he had been in a teenage gang that beat up an elderly man who died soon after the beating (it’s disputed whether the beating was the cause of death). There’s nothing cute or “silly” about that. It’s weird of the BBC to put it like that, to fail to explain why the silly boy was in a prison cell, to fail to mention the victim at all. Instead the BBC proceeds to burble about Lees at an awards ceremony/party.

The party – hosted by leading gay magazine Attitude – may have been glamorous but Paris was invited because of her work as a journalist, broadcaster and activist.

Plus the pretend-woman thing.

With the organisation All About Trans she is determinedly changing media representation of transgender people like herself. And as the first transgender presenter for Radio 1 and Channel 4, she is making a mainstream audience aware of trans issues.

It’s hard to believe she had difficulty leaving the house a few years ago and could not get a job answering phones because of her criminal record. “I genuinely thought I wouldn’t be able to function or have a normal life or do anything so it’s gobsmacking that I’ve got any semblance of normality, let alone do all these fabulous things,” she says.

Yeah it is kind of gobsmacking. Women are pretty gobsmacked that this guy is considered newsworthy and exactly the right person to explain girlhood to all of us.

“I had a lot of time for thinking when I was in prison.”

Paris felt like she was at “the bottom of society” but had a vision of who she wanted to be.

The vision included giving up smoking, going back to college to do her A-levels, and becoming female.

A David Copperfield or Jude Fawley, except for the becoming female part.

Paris worked hard and was released early on a curfew, but she carried on living as a boy when she went back to college.

“I knew I wanted a transition and I was so jealous of all the girls at college that looked pretty and had boys talking to them and all those things,” she says.

Ooooooh yeah all those things – that’s the best summary of girlhood ever. They’re like paper dolls, but in 3-D.

Paris stopped wearing boyish clothes and moved to Brighton to study English at university.

“In the space of six weeks I went from living in Nottingham as a boy with my grandma still alive, to living in Brighton as a girl,” she says.

Yep. That’s all there is to it. Just stop wearing boyish clothes and bam, you’re a girl.