Name: India Willoughby

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Age: 51

Twitter: @IndiaWilloughby

Best known for: being the UK’s first transgender newsreader

Bio: Born Jonathan, India started out presenting the news for the northeast and Cumbria on ITV Border. In 2010, she quit her regional job to undergo a full gender transition.

She told the Borders Telegraph: “Being trans was something I struggled with for many years, and caused me a lot of stress. For five years I led a secret double life, flip-flopping between male and female in two different cities. My family and friends completely oblivious to my alternate worlds.”

After quitting her job, India then worked at a PR firm in Newcastle, spending weekends living as a man and weekdays as a woman. After finally telling her family about her double life, she started live full time as India.

Since then, she’s spoken about her gender reassignment, most memorably on Loose Women in October 2016.

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India has returned to the Border and Tyne Tees ITV reporting team and is currently penning her first novel.

Authors

Thomas LingDigital editor, BBC Science Focus

Thomas is Digital editor at BBC Science Focus. Writing about everything from cosmology to anthropology, he specialises in the latest psychology, health and neuroscience discoveries. Thomas has a Masters degree (distinction) in Magazine Journalism from the University of Sheffield and has written for Men’s Health, Vice and Radio Times. He has been shortlisted as the New Digital Talent of the Year at the national magazine Professional Publishers Association (PPA) awards. Also working in academia, Thomas has lectured on the topic of journalism to undergraduate and postgraduate students at The University of Sheffield.

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