A remarkable book is soon to go on sale. Change for the Better – the story of Georgina Beyer is not a epic adventure story in the classical mould but is a remarkable story nevertheless. Beyer, a transsexual and male prostitute who shucked off her past to become Mayor of Carterton is now aspiring to become Wairarapa's MP. Her life story goes on sale only weeks before the election and was written as a story told to Cathy Casey, a political opponent also vying for the MP's job, as Alliance candidate. Chief reporter DON FARMER read Change for the Better this week.

FEW men would ever want to admit that one of the happiest memories of their childhood was dressing themselves up in their mother's clothing and admiring themselves in the mirror.

Nor would they want to commit to paper their experiences as a stripper and male prostitute in seedy Wellington clubs.

George Bertrand has done this, not as the little boy who struggled with his sexuality incurring the wrath of most of his disbelieving family but as the immaculately-groomed woman he was to become – Georgina Beyer.

Change for the Better, promoted as the story of an ordinary boy who was to become an extraordinary woman, is the Georgina Beyer story as told to Cathy Casey and is soon to go on sale in bookshops nationwide.

It is a startling “tell all”, detailing the most intimate details of the woman who, as Labour Party candidate is trying to smash the National Party's hold on Wairarapa in the November election.

Beyer needs to overhaul an 8000 National majority and if she succeeds would not only become Wairarapa MP but the country's first-ever transsexual parliamentarian.

It remains to be seen whether this candid account of her life will help or hinder her chances of election.

Beyer must surely have satisfied herself that laying out her murky past for all to see would strengthen the perception that she is a straight shooter capable of building on her experience as Carterton's mayor. She has taken a calculated risk but readers of Change for the Better will soon realise Georgina Beyer is not a person who shies away from challenges.

Georgina Beyer was born George Bertrand in Wellington in 1957 and had a sometimes happy, but terribly confused, childhood. He spent his first few years on his grandparents farm in Taranaki, but not playing cowboys and indians or kicking a rugby ball. Young George preferred mothers and fathers or doctors and nurses and with his friend Joy started playing “dress-ups”, wearing frocks and entertaining seasonal workers making hay on the farm.

“For me, dressing up in women's clothes was more than just a game. I had a preference for things feminine. Even at that time it felt comfortable. “My choice of reading was also regarded as girlish. I enjoyed fairy stories.”

From Taranaki, George was whisked off to the Hutt Valley to be reunited with his mother who had married lawyer and prominent businessman Colin Beyer, with whom young George was apparently to have a love-hate relationship.

At Upper Hutt Primary School and later at Ngaio School, George lived out the charade of his misplaced sexuality. One day he made a monumental error of judgement.

Wearing one of his mother's dresses and a woman's wig he went a stage further than preening himself in the mirror. He decided to go to the dairy, in drag.

Recognised by the shopkeeper George had to not only live with the embarrassment of being discovered, but also with fronting up to his mother and stepfather trying to explain why he had been on the street dressed up as a girl.

lesson thus learnt, George resisted the temptation to dress as a woman while at Wellesley College – it was “inappropriate” in an all boy environment. The dressing up didn't go away, but was restricted to private moments at home during school holidays when he had the house to himself.

Later, as a pupil at Onslow College, George Bertrand was introduced to one of the great loves of Georgina Beyer's life – acting. His first attempt was in the J.M. Barrie play The Admirable Crichton.

With his mother's divorce George shifted with her and his brother Andrew to Auckland and was enrolled at Papatoetoe High School.

Happy with developing “wonderful platonic friendships” with girls George nevertheless found himself “forced into a situation of having to have heterosexual sex”. Twice he tried it, and managed it, but “absolutely hated it”.

Out of school, back in Wellington and fending for himself, George's secret life took a more permanent turn. At the infamous Royal Oak Hotel he discovered Wellington's gay scene. It was to set the scene for the rest of his life and lead to his decision to give up life's charade and live as a woman.

So at 17 George Bertrand became Georgina Beyer.

From this point on in the story readers of Change for the Better have their liberal-minded attitudes put to the test. What follows is a no-holds-barred account of life on the seedy side of the street.

Wearing a G-string, with male genitalia “tucked away” and on a diet of female hormones for enlarging breasts, Georgina Beyer earnt a living stripping in clubs and simulating sex.

She worked at clubs with names like Exotique and the Purple Onion but with not enough money coming in to maintain her lifestyle she resorted to other earners.

Before going on stage she would go out into the audience and say: Would you like me to lap dance on you or would you like to feel my tits.” Takers would pay $20 and Georgina could easily collect $100 a night in this way.

Then there were the men who wanted sex.

“I was propositioned regularly. The patrons thought I was a woman. I got away with it because the men usually wanted a quick blow or a hand job for $30.” If they wanted more she relied on “trick sex”, the success of which depended on how drunk the customer was!

Georgina Beyer was finally drawn to Australia and unsurprisingly gravitated to Kings Cross where more of the same followed. It was in Kings Cross where she took her life in her hands, foolishly getting into a car with four men who whisked her away from the city and brutally raped her.

It was, Beyer says in the book, “hitting rock bottom” and is the turning book of her life story.

Back in New Zealand she carried on her life as a drag queen and stripper but the goalposts had shifted.

Georgina Beyer set about changing things. She pursued her talent for acting, and she decided to have a sex change.

The sex-change operation is a subject she does not dwell on and in the book it takes up little more than a page or two. Nevertheless Beyer describes it as being “the most significant and greatest achievement of my life”.

Now, as a “proper woman” and with a determination to succeed, she left her past behind and began to seriously carve out a new life.

Television and stage work lead to her being nominated for a Gofta award. She developed a social conscience, and she moved to Wairarapa.

Living in Carterton she joined a drama, media and life skills course, worked on a newly-launched radio station started by her now National opponent Paul Henry, narrowly missed election to the district council but got there in a rather bitterly-fought by-election and joined the hardly-functioning Kuranui College Board of Trustees. Only the casting vote of the board chairman secured her nomination and according to Beyer her selection obviously displeased college principal Joye Halford.

“I understand she turned white and said, ‘oh my God' under her breath.”

Wracked by squabbles and in-fighting and with its two factions unable to compromise, the school board was to come to a fiery end, and was to gain the dubious distinction of being the first in the country to be disbanded at the insistence of the minister of education.

For Georgina Beyer though it was all part of a learning curve and she went on to be elected Mayor of Carterton in a landslide victory over a brace of male opponents.

The stripper and lap dancer from the seedy side of Wellington had earnt her respectability.

Change for the Better is not a daunting read, being only 163 pages. It could be said that much of it could have been written by any stripper or nightclub worker, some of it could have been penned by any one of New Zealand's small band of transsexuals but all of it could only be attributed to one woman – Georgina Beyer.

Change for the Better. Published by Random House (NZ) Ltd. Retail $29.95