Once, in an article, I said I was going to dump my girlfriend for Ching-He Huang of Chinese Food Made Easy. Of course, I didn’t because that would be silly of me. However, not as hare-brained as my new scheme to run off to America to hound the lovely ladies featured in True Stories: Tears, Tiaras and Transsexuals (More4, Tuesday, 17 March, 10pm). Hot diggity dawg! The post and pre-op gals featured in this marvellous film were seriously stunning. Better than their obviously fine looks, was their even more impressive stories.

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The film followed the gals of the first ever World’s Most Beautiful Transsexual Pageant in Las Vegas, where women competed for the crown and a starring role in a Vegas Revue. What was great that the film walked the fine line of trashy and touching. It did it perfectly. I was very pleased that the back stories of the girls were included, but I expected that. Many stories like this focus on the maudlin, the struggle. As vital as that is to a tale like this, it would be churlish to ignore the camper side of proceedings. The pure, unadulterated trash-glamour which makes the scene so much fun.

The fun element is often eschewed because the subject needs to be emotionally laid bare. It needs to be understood by the naysayers, that the decision to change your sex is often painful and powerful… and terrifying. However, that could imply that transgender folk never get their rocks-off and have fun. Transgender documentaries are usually gloomy affairs in Glasgow bedsits, with someone weeping after a botched bout of surgery. This truly celebrated the scene in the best place for it – Sin City, Las Vegas! So out came the feathers and the bared buttocks and the Hi-NRG music and the uproarious laughter. It was a real pleasure to watch.

In the stories of the girls, they were refreshingly varied. Tiara was a strange and complex woman who, despite being a transsexual, was a real God fearing gal who wanted to die as a man. Not stated, but implied, was Tiara’s views on homosexuality where she said that they would be “judged by one person and one person only… the Lord’s son Jesus Christ”. On the flip, we also met Maria who had won awards with her community work, educating people about AIDS and HIV. Elsewhere, we had the harder tales on acceptance and criticisms, as well as the lovely scenes of families accepting the whole thing, with unified giggling on anecdotes from the past and present.

And that’s the point. While transgender men and women have made decision that some may not understand, they’re just humans with stories varied and wide… just like anyone else. There’s sometimes unity, there’s sometimes fall-outs, but only in the way any group of people work. One lady, Cassandra, summed it up best of all: “Yes, I’m a transsexual… but I don’t want that to be all I am… I’m just a human being… with some bitchin’ clothes.” Amen to that.