Lady Colin Campbell: 'My father said I should take rat poison Lady Colin "would have been one who would have qualified for the German remedy." She was born with genital deformities, which led to her being registered as a boy and christened George William Ziadie, even though doctors would later confirm she was biologically female. The international protocol in those days was to do what they did; it was perfectly standard. In 1949, the feeling was that it was infinitely better to give a handicapped child a little plus, and male was much better than female. From around the age of three, however, it was clear to everyone who knew her that Georgie, as she's always been known, was a girl. She dressed in shorts and T-shirts - "but that's what all children in Jamaica wear, so it made no difference" - but played with dolls and loved sewing. Cousins would say to my mother: 'Why is Georgie being brought up as a boy? Still, my gender wasn't that big a deal until I hit puberty. Then it became a real issue. So traumatic was this period that Lady Colin visibly flinches recalling it. From 11 to 18, she was forced to attend her father's old school, an all-boys" Catholic seminary, where she was bullied relentlessly. It was horrendous, like a glimpse into the bowels of Hell. Don't ask me about it - would you ask somebody who was yanked out of the showers at Auschwitz to describe the scent of Zyklon B? At 13, with her body developing obvious female traits and realising she was attracted to boys, she secretly consulted her mother's gynaecologist, who was sympathetic to her plight. But when her parents found out, they placed her in the hands of a sadistic husband-and-wife medical team. They hospitalised her "for the most terrifying three weeks of my life," forcibly injecting her with male hormones that made her voice begin to drop, her nipples to shrink and hair to develop on her upper lip. She put her foot down and treatment ceased. But for the next five years, her father continued to refuse to help her. "He used everything in his power to prevent the inevitable denouement" - in other words, allow his son to live as a daughter. "Our family was extremely well known and he would have done anything to avoid publicity and embarrassment," she continues. "I remember walking with him from the owners" and stewards" car park upstairs to our box at the racecourse. People were staring, because my situation was sufficiently well known, and although I wore trousers it was very clear I was not a boy. You could see to him it was the worst ordeal of his life. The only way out he could conceive was that I should commit suicide. He told me: 'The one solution to your problem is a dose of rat poison."" How did Lady Colin respond? "Aha, that is a bridge too far," she replies, enigmatically. I was always articulate and silver-tongued, so he did not say it again. It was such an exceptional situation, he was in over his head, so I decided to forgive him and move on. She's less munificent towards her "poisonous" mother, who appeared to support her while - it transpired after her death - secretly sabotaging her daughter's quest to have surgery. It was unforgivable. She knew without surgery, it was unlikely I'd marry, so she planned to have me forever as her unpaid companion. By her late teens, Lady Colin was living openly as a girl. My friends could not have been more agreeable, they thought my situation was quite exotic. She moved to New York to study fashion design, holding her head high and disguising "acute embarrassment" as puzzled tutors repeatedly asked why she was registered as a boy. She began modelling and dating men, making her even more desperate to claim "my true identity." Eventually, her grandmother, "ballistic" on having learnt the truth, offered the $5,000 needed for surgery. It was performed in New York. No one ever faced the knife more eagerly than I - you would have thought I was going on a wonderful cruise. Aged 21, all mention of gender was removed from her first birth certificate and a second was issued with the name, Georgia Ziadie, and sex: female. The story was far from over, however. At 24, she agreed to marry Colin Campbell, after knowing him for just five days, telling him about her past before the wedding. He quickly revealed himself to be a violent alcoholic and drug addict. When she left him after nine months, stories emerged that her husband had not known her physical history before the wedding, and that people in his circle thought he'd married a transvestite. She successfully sued the papers that claimed she'd had a sex change, but salacious rumours have dogged her ever since. There have been several love affairs ("There's something about me; even without make-up men, always made a beeline for me"), but she suspects the scandal is one of the reasons she never remarried. Lady Colin insists she never wanted to keep using her ex-husband's title, but there's no doubt it boosted book sales, especially in the US. Obviously I have contacts. If that's been your world, you are going to know things - you know, what Americans call dirt - all the intimate details. Alone, she adopted two Russian babies, Misha and Dima, who are now 20. I've always been maternal and Russia was a country where it's possible to adopt infants - my English social worker told me not even to waste my time trying here. She said: 'You'll be a very good mother, you're warm, loving and ruthless. Now, it's quite the done thing to adopt as a single mother, Angelina Jolie did it, Sandra Bullock, but when I did it I couldn't think of anyone apart from Joan Crawford. But I'm never afraid to break new ground. Misha appears, headphones on, on his way out the door. Are you going, honey? Okeydokes, what time are you coming back? "I've no idea," he mumbles. Lady Colin is hugely eccentric, with a tendency to bang on about her beauty - an understandable retort to decades of prurient gossip about your gender. But she's also clever, kind and fun - testament to the fact that, with the right disposition, you can overcome any setback. "That's what I want to show," she exclaims. I'm living proof that whatever happens to you in life, you can turn base metal into gold. I've always been loving and outgoing, and wanted to be happy. Just because you're born disabled, it doesn't mean you have to end up having a terrible life. You make choices and you can choose to embrace life. Bloody hell, it's up to you! Lady Colin Campbell is the author of 'The Real Diana" (Arcadia Press) and 'The Untold Life of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother" (Dynasty Press/St Martins)