Lauren Harries

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since January 2007.

Lauren Charlotte Harries (formerly James Harries), was born in Surrey, England in 1978 and is a disputed (see below) child prodigy who became famous in Britain after appearing on Wogan, Terry Wogan's chat show in 1988.

On the programme the ten-year-old boy appeared to demonstrate a knowledge about antiques far beyond his years and this, combined with a striking appearance, dress sense (bow ties and formal attire), blonde curly hair, and his precocious manner of speaking caught the nation's attention.

In 1991, the book Rags To Riches was published by the family publishing company Adviser and Weekly News. Writing was credited to James, with illustrations by his brother Adam. The book was a light hearted look at jumble sales written from real life experiences of James and his family. It purported to be a guide to making money by spotting bargains, and contained a reference guide to aid with identification of antiques. It did not sell in very large numbers and is quite hard to obtain nowadays, although it sometimes comes up for sale on internet auction sites.

Once he faded from the public eye, James was employed in a series of low paid jobs but by his own admission usually didn't last very long before being fired or quitting. Occasionally he would resurface on TV shows and expressed an interest in starring in a soap although nothing came of this.

Initially he thought himself to be gay and tried the gay lifestyle but didn't fit in. After someone in a supermarket approached him and said they thought he should become a woman, he came to the realisation that he was transsexual, and transitioned to become a woman in 1998. In 2001 Harries had sex reassignment surgery.

In 2004, Channel 4 broadcast a documentary Little Lady Fauntleroy made by actor Keith Allen in which he interviewed the Harries family. They told him they were marriage counsellors with a sideline in private investigation. They also claimed to have many qualifications demonstrating their abilities in those fields, the entire family being Doctors of Metaphysics.

Allen discovered that many of the qualifications had been purchased on the internet and that Harries' own mother had overseen Harries' counselling on the psychological aspects of gender reassignment. A number of other aspects of the family's life did not bear scrutiny.

Contrary to the perceived wisdom of the time, Harries may not have been a child prodigy at all. On Allen's documentary Lauren Harries revealed that she had been given stock, impressive sounding answers that could be used if asked a question she could not understand. Harries also received an unorthodox, home-based education and passed only three GCSEs (a below average, some might even say poor, academic record).

The documentary was released on 4 July 2005 as a commercial DVD.

Since Harries' childhood the family, who live in Cardiff, Wales, have been persecuted by neighbours who take exception to Harries' "transvestitism" and the perceived snobbery of the family. Cabbages are often thrown at the windows of their house. On July 8, 2005, a gang of five to seven young men attacked Lauren, her father and her brother.^[1] One 17 year old boy was later fined and given a supervision order for his role in the incident.^[2]

In October 2006 Lauren appeared in a Channel Five television series Trust Me...I'm A Beauty Therapist which was filmed on location in a Beauty Therapists in Swansea, Wales.

Lauren was recently rumoured as being a housemate in the 5th series of Celebrity Big Brother which started in January 2007. She reportedly failed the psychological test that all prospective housemates have to take and was replaced by Cleo Rocos.^{[citation needed]}