'Belle de Jour' call-girl writer exposes herself

2009/11/16

The employers of a 34-year-old British scientist who wrote a racy best-selling book about being a prostitute defended her Monday, after she outed herself as “Belle de Jour”. Doctor Brooke Magnanti, who works for The Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, revealed herself at the weekend as the person behind the nom de plume — the title of a famous 1960s French film starring Catherine Deneuve.

Magnanti, who lives in Bristol, southwest England, revealed her true identity to The Sunday Times newspaper amid fears that a former boyfriend was about to blow the secret, and to lift the burden of living a double life.

Magnanti kept a weblog of her antics in 2003-2004, which were turned into a best-selling book, “The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl”. Her memoirs were adapted into a hit 16-episode television series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl”, which starred actress Billie Piper and was screened in countries around the world.

Magnanti is part of a team researching the potential effects on a baby of its mother’s exposure to toxic chemicals. A spokesman for her employer, the University of Bristol, told AFP: “She’s employed by the university but we’ve got nothing to add regarding the matter.

“She’s a researcher. She’s just a member of staff here and what happened in the past doesn’t really bear relevance to what she’s doing now.” Magnanti went to London to find work while completing the thesis for her doctorate, but found her savings were vanishing rapidly. She joined an agency and began having sex for 300 pounds (500 dollars, 335 euros) a session.

The doctor, who maintains the Internet diary she kept at the time, wrote on it that “keeping up a double life” was “just too difficult to do long-term”. “I suppose I always thought that the part of my life I wrote about would fade away, that I could stick it in a box and move on. Totally separate it from the ’real me’,” she wrote.

Her publisher Orion Books said: “It’s a courageous decision for Belle de Jour to come forward with her true identity and we support her decision to do so. “We have published her since 2005 and we are looking forward to continuing that relationship.” -- AFP