I curtsey for the audience as the thunder of their applause breaks over me, a pounding, re-echoing surf so deep you could drown in it. I keep a bright, happy, grateful smile fixed on my face as I do so. I'm Ireland's sweetheart after all, the songbird of Kerry. My shows are sold out, my albums top the bestseller lists ,I'll be appearing at the Abbey Theatre as Kathleen Ni Houlihan at this year's festival and I'm tipped to be the next Rose of Tralee.

I can see my own face projected on the screens around the vast auditorium, a beautiful, bright eyed face framed with a mass of tumbling red curls that fall to my narrow shoulders and fair, slender arms – shoulders and arms that make me look as if I've never toted anything heavier than a microphone or a clutch purse in my life. A little girl comes on stage with my end-of-performance bouquet and I crouch down to take it, giving her my best aren't-you-adorable-oh-I-want-one of my-own look. I am Orlagh O'Malley and a million girls would give at least a few fingers, if not their right arm, to be me.

I'd give at least that not to be Orlagh O'Malley but then three years ago I was a man, and without going into gruesome details I've already lost things I value far more than a finger or a hand to put me where I am.
Lots of people will tell you that their lives would be different and better if only they'd listened to sensible elders when they were young. I don't think that successfully avoiding national fame is what they had in mind; nevertheless, if only I'd listened more when I was a bored, daydreaming electrician's apprentice I wouldn't be in this mess now.

My gaffer always used to say two things with every job we did 'Never forget, if you mess this up you could kill someone.' and 'If you cause a problem, you have to fix it. ' I did kill someone and they did make me fix it.
I accidentally wired up a live mike for the real and original Orlagh O'Malley – the one who really was the kind, beautiful charming person I pretend to be - and electrocuted her. She was rushed to a private hospital suite with her agent, producers, directors and a guilt stricken teenage apprentice called Mickey Donnellan following as fast as they could, but she never regained consciousness.

Everyone was devastated but for some there was more than sorrow to think about. Orlagh wasn't just a person, she was an investment. There were going to be bankruptcies, sackings, the end of careers, homes lost and all because of me, standing there weeping like the useless eejit I was. When someone asked me what I'd do to fix this I said 'Anything' and someone clamped a cloth full of ether over my face. The next thing I knew I was waking up in a hospital bed in enormous pain everywhere with a voice which, as the croaking wore off, grew sweeter and more musical each day. Needless to say this was not what I had in mind.

Unfortunately, it was too late. All that was needed now (All! It was a nightmare task!) was the coaching, training, acting, singing, dancing and deportment lessons (and some badly needed therapy!) that would enable me to take Orlagh's place. Fifteens months after her accident Orlagh O'Malley was ready to take the stage once again. You'd think I would have struggled more against my fate but honestly, with the irreversible surgery with had made me a woman already completed what was the point? My options were that I could be a girl with a future or a girl with nothing, but either way, I was a girl.

My face was a trap, my firm young breasts a ball and chain, my pretty necklaces a slave collar, my bracelets shackles and my dresses and heels the walls of a prison I could never escape because the prison was my own body and everything about me. I might as well be Orlagh O'Malley because it was too late to be anyone else.

If it wasn't that I still felt like a man inside, whatever my eyes told me this might not even have been a bad life. They'd played fair on the contracts, I was rich, I was famous, I was envied and so far I'd managed to persuade my handlers that my image didn't need me to have a celebrity boyfriend. All the same there was one tear jerker number I sometimes had to sing that corny, old fashioned, sexist and mawkish as it was, always made me want to cry simply because it reminds me that I really am, in the words of the song 'Only a bird in a gilded cage'.
THE END