EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Photographer David Bailey’s son Sascha says he registered as transgender in Japan – ‘I lost it completely and thought I wanted to be female’

David Bailey enjoyed marriages to beautiful women, including film star Catherine Deneuve and model Marie Helvin.

But the famous photographer’s son Sacha Bailey tells me he was so unhappy during his marriage that he began the formal process of becoming a woman “to escape the trauma.”

Last year I reported that Sasha, 29, an art curator, had “fled” from Tokyo following the breakdown of his ten-year marriage to Japanese lawyer Mimi Nishikawa, who is ten years his senior.

As I reported last month, the now-separated couple lived together in Tokyo until October 2022.

Now he tells me, “I came out as transgender before I left Japan. Before I left, I completely lost it and thought I wanted to be a woman.

“According to the Japanese government, I am in fact officially transgender.”

Sasha, whose mother is Bailey’s fourth wife, Catherine Dyer, explains: “It was an escape from trauma.

“I thought I had a second personality called ‘Sue’, a woman. “She (Sue) protected me.”

Although he registered as transgender in Japan, he did not undergo any transition medications or surgeries. And he is no longer considering the possibility of gender reassignment.

“I didn’t take anything, not even hormones,” he confirms, adding, “But I was prescribed them, and I still have the doctor’s notes and the (prescription) box.”

Sasha is currently dating Lucy Brown, a former media assistant at Canadian media platform Rebel News and later working for far-right activist Tommy Robinson. She has since distanced herself from Robinson.

Lucy told me last year that Sasha, whom she befriended online before he left Japan, was “very lost”, looked “almost shell-shocked” and was “almost afraid” of Mimi upon his return.

Mimi did not respond to my request for comment.

No-show of unfortunate soprano star De Nise

Even more turbulence in the career of Danielle de Niese. I hear the soprano has left La bohème at the Royal Opera House this month and next “while she recovers from a recent illness”.

Last summer she pulled out of a production of Poulenc’s Dialogue of the Carmelites at Glyndebourne, the Sussex opera house of which her husband Gus Christie is executive chairman.

It was later revealed that de Niese, 44, had starred in the new West End production of Aspects of Love, the hit musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Gus insisted: “Danny will be back at Glyndebourne next year for this season.”

Let’s hope.

Like an action movie, Statham was silent with me

Jason Statham’s Hollywood action films have raked in billions at the box office since he first appeared in Guy Ritchie films more than 20 years ago, beating out British stars such as Idris Elba and even James Bond star Daniel Craig. But he clearly doesn’t want to shout about it.

When I tried to talk to him at the London premiere of his latest film, The Beekeeper, a colleague told me that Statham, 56, was “taking a break from his voice.”

Apparently he is a strong but silent type.

Playing drug lord takes its toll on Sofia

Sofia Vergara suffers for her art. The 51-year-old actress, who became the highest-paid woman on US television with $19 million for her role in the sitcom Modern Family, was left with chronic back pain after her role as drug lord Griselda Blanco in the upcoming Netflix drama.

“I changed my position and it seemed like a brilliant idea until three months later when I tried to get out of bed and got stuck,” she tells me at a VIP screening of Griselda at the Mayfair Hotel in London. She adds: “They had to give me an injection because my back was giving out. The doctor said, “You’re crazy, you can’t do this at 50.” But it was worth it.’

She grew up under a dictatorship, her husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis just seven years after their wedding, and her art was often rejected, leaving the family broke and desperate.

But the scale of Paula Rego’s triumph over adversity is now being revealed with the publication of her will, 18 months after her death aged 87. at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Rego, the National Gallery’s first artist-in-residence who was made a dame in 2010, worked in her studio six days a week, with opera playing before lunch and Frank Sinatra or Portuguese fado playing in the afternoon, ending the day with music. a glass of champagne.

She bequeathed everything to her three children, Caroline, Victoria and Nicholas – unlike Freud, who left nothing to three of his recognized descendant of 14 people.

Naomi Campbell, who once said she made the term “anger management” famous, now prides herself on channeling her inner peace.

The notoriously fiery supermodel, 53, showed off her flexibility by doing shoulderstands during a women-only yoga class at the £300-a-month FitnGlam gym in Dubai.

Campbell, who has two children, says it’s her “happy place.”

Calm was in short supply when the late Lord Glenconner appeared on the scene, either throwing a tantrum, or reaching into his trousers to tear off part of his paper underpants and chew the resulting fragment.

But there will soon be a new tranquil space in St. Lucia, where Glenconner has escaped from Mustique, the Caribbean island to which he lured Princess Margaret, Sir Mick Jagger and numerous Guinness World Records holders. Michael Jacques, 67, a Londoner from St Lucia, told me he was building a chapel on land that was the subject of a bitter dispute between him and a Scottish peer.

The chapel, Jacques adds, is intended to “celebrate good over evil—thanks to Jesus for giving me the strength to not let Lord Glenconner take that from me.”