Belle de Jour is Belle de Jew

It's out:

A highly successful, widely read and intellectual woman with several degrees, Dr Magnanti was born in Florida, the Jewish granddaughter of Italian immigrants (*). She attended Clearwater Central Catholic high school and went on to university in the U.S. She moved to Britain as a postgraduate student at Sheffield, where she embarked on a PhD in computer visualisation, annotation and databasing of human skeletal remains...



She admitted in yesterday's interview that she has 'a pathological aversion to being in debt' and had no moral objection to the concept of 'hookerdom'. Indeed, she reveals that she has a relative who used to be a streetwalker to support a drug habit.

(*) Her mother was Susan Levy.


What is this about, you ask?

Well,

For six years, her identity remained a closely guarded secret: a tantalising mystery for all those hooked on the stockings-and-stilettos tales of high-class call girl Belle de Jour. A male fantasy with her Chanel nail varnish, lacy knickers, sexual tricks and vast knowledge of French cinema, the anonymous author of the best-selling memoir The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl prompted a frenzy of speculation.

As the Guardian wrote:

One of the best kept literary secrets of the decade was revealed last night when 34-year-old scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti announced she was the writer masquerading as call girl Belle de Jour.

...But now Magnanti, a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol, has spoken of the time six years ago she worked as a £300 an hour prostitute working through a London escort agency. Magnanti turned to the agency in the final stages of her PhD thesis when she ran out of money.

I knew she was Jewish all along.

She mentioned planning for a family Rosh Hashana celebration once.

Here:

mercredi, septembre 15

Sundown is the start of Rosh Hashanah. I'm afraid, darlings, the time has come for me to go.

Mentioned here, too, I just found.


Oh, she used "oy vey", also; another giveaway:-

Located what sounded like an excellent, small, discreet agency (word of mouth, as they say). After email contact and sending my photos, I finally arranged to meet the manager at the dining room of a central London hotel. She sounded very young and had a very strong Eastern European accent. Polish, maybe? Should I ask? Oy vey.