It's never been easier to convince an MP to pose in front of Parliament.

With a flick of her multi-toned locks, Georgina Beyer, the world's first transsexual MP, has flung herself eagerly at the stone plinth above which Prime Minister Richard Seddon stands immortalised in bronze.

She leans into King Dick's leg, her teeth quickly licked of any vestiges of lippy and, hands on hips, eyes fixed with that kissy-kissy stare, pouts into the photographer's lens.

Suddenly - "How's this?" - she whips her fur-lined jacket open to reveal a to-die-for figure in elegant black, draped with chains of faux gold and garnet-coloured gems.

"When it comes to cameras, once a queen..." Beyer winks, then sinks into the fox fur trim with a giggle.

Beyer is heading for the old stage lights again after announcing she'll quit next February after seven years in Parliament to take up a role in Christchurch's Fortune Theatre.

The MP has twice before been stopped from quitting by the most unlikely of folks. In 2002, 60 Grey Power members from Dannevirke talked her around. Then three years later Brian Tamaki marshalled his homophobic troops to Parliament. "How could I leave now when the spectre of that is on the horizon?"

After nearly 50 years - as a boy, prostitute, stripper drag queen, actress, mayor and MP, she reckons she has two or three careers left in her. Of Parliament, she's had her fill.

"We deal with the most grave matters of the nation," she says. "And for a bit of a slapper from Vivian St like me, you know, wow! That's a bit of a learning curve! And strangely enough at the end of the day, I see so many similarities between politics and prostitution, especially when it comes to election time, you know? I mean what the hell are we soliciting for?"

Plans for her valedictory speech outfit have begun. "Something glammy," she muses, because the cameras might come to such an important event.

"Oh, you doooooon't want my Christmas day story," she moans.

Loved as a queer icon and adored as a hero by human rights activists, Beyer will more than likely spend Christmas tomorrow alone, at home, in the tiny hamlet of rural Carterton.

Her aloneness is a necessary escape from the people she spends "99 per cent of the time with", she reckons. "That's part of the job. It's work. It's 'You're on' - the price of fame and notoriety."

But the microscope of politics has played havoc with her private life.

"I haven't had the emotional support (others have) by way of a home life or anything like that. I've had to deal with this entire 14 years of my life, as far as that's concerned, alone.

"Yes, I've had support from friends, but many of them have dissipated because you just can't unload on people about stuff. It ruins your personal social life quite dramatically."