TV reporter returns to the screen as a woman called India five years after she last appeared on TV as a man

Jonathan Willoughby Ex-ITV newsreader has returned to the screen as a woman called India after five years living two parallel lives'.

The 50-year-old quit ITV's regional news show in Carlisle, Cumbria, in 2010 after ten years of presenting.

He went on to secure a public relations job as a woman and last month finally made the transformation permanent by having the full £14,000 gender reassignment surgery at an NHS hospital in Brighton.

Ms Willoughby, who has one child, has now revealed she quit her presenting job after more than a decade to be true to herself.

She said: 'It was a job I loved a lot but unfortunately I had a secret. I was ignoring what I knew deep down, that I didn't belong in that body.

'Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s I kept the secret deep within me.

'But in February 2010 I was interviewing a politician and caught sight of my reflection.

She said: 'My life finally feels whole. Being transgender is not a fetish or a game but is something deep - and it's not all darkness and you can have a life.

'I always felt that I was in a play and just before the curtain had gone up someone had given me a script and said, "this is the role you are going to act out for the rest of your life".

'But this year I just felt why am I hiding why am I pretending? Why am I deceiving people? I just regret not doing this sooner.'

She revealed herself publicly last Monday on the BBC's Inside Out North East and Cumbria. 

She said: 'I decided to stand up and be counted. Historically being transgender has been branded as anything from a perversion to a joke, rather than something that is biological.

'There's so much rubbish talked about the subject even now. By telling my story on the BBC One I hope that I can - in some small way - help break down any ill-conceived pre-conceptions.'  

Daily Mail UK