Freedom fighter

IT'S NO EASY thing to penetrate the perfumed world of Parinya Charoenphol, Thailand's - and probably the world's - only transsexual kickboxing champion. There's the frantic rounds of interviews to promote Beautiful Boxer, Ekachai Uekrongtham's film about her extraordinary life. Then there are the almost daily appearances on a cavalcade of inane television game and chat shows. Plus she's got a gym to run, as well as a new restaurant.

I learn this the hard way. I'm halfway to our first appointment when Parinya - better known as Nong Toom - calls, voice still a tad husky despite surgery to correct her booming bass, to say she's off to see the kickboxing at Lumpini Stadium instead. 'I'm sorry,' she says. 'My friend's fighting. You understand?'

We arrange to meet at 5pm the following day at Naree Seafood, her latest investment, a thatch-roofed prawn palace set amid the massage parlours and 'entertainment complexes' of Ratchadaphisek Road. I'm early. Bad move. By 6pm, still no Nong Toom. Nervous, I try her mobile. It's off. A bunch more calls unearths the news that she's at a nearby television studio, recording - what else? - a game show.

Her publicist is unapologetic. 'She works for Grammy now. You should have gone through us first.' Thailand's biggest entertainment conglomerate, which controls its coterie of pop stars, actors and assorted celebrities with an iron fist, signed Nong Toom up to a five-year contract two months ago. 'You can wait, if you like,' I'm told. Which I do. But by 8.30pm, I have to confess that my interest in post-operative kickboxing transsexuals, famous or not, is rapidly waning.

Then a minivan roars into the dusty driveway and this tall, willowy figure wafts out and jiggles across the cobbles, clocks my bored slouch and furrowed brow, and breaks out a megawatt smile. 'I'm so, sooo sorry,' she coos. 'I forgot about the game show. Can you forgive me?' I had expected at close range Nong Toom's face might bear more hints at her pugilistic past than the airbrushed film company glossies allow, but this ex-boxer really is beautiful. Her skin is coffee-coloured and flawless, save for a tiny slit of a scar over her left eye. But it's her hands I can't stop staring at: they are delicate, long-fingered, the sort of hands you'd expect on an artist or a piano player. You wonder how those fragile bones packed such dynamite - although it was more often Nong Toom's scything knees and kicks to the neck and chin that humbled her opponents.

And humbled they were: Nong Toom smashed her opponents bodies and egos, then rubbed it in by giving them a big kiss, marking the vanquished with her trademark cherry-red lipstick. Her illustrious ring career featured more than 60 wins, many by knockout, and just a handful of losses (mainly early in her career, and then right at the end, after the female hormone treatment had started to kick in).