LONDON: An exclusive London gentlemen's club is set to have the first female member in its 149-year history -- because a current member is having a sex change, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The paper quoted Savile Club member Jerry Hayes, a former MP, saying that a fellow unidentified club associate who is in his 30s, married and has two children, was transitioning to become a woman.
"It would be unfair for a terrific friendly guy to expel him from the club just because he's become a woman. That was never considered," Hayes said.
"The rule is no woman can apply to join the Savile Club. This is not at all setting a precedent for who can become a member because this individual applied to join as a man," he was quoted as saying.
The Savile Club, in the exclusive Mayfair district of the British capital, was founded in 1868.
Early members included the novelists Henry James, Rudyard Kipling and Evelyn Waugh, and current associates include thriller writer John Le Carre and producer Andrew Lloyd Webber.