The prostitute and the politician

Introducing the real Belle de Jour

Over the course of the last six years, during which she has written a best-selling book which has spawned a successful TV series (The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl), the celebrated call girl-cum-blogger Belle de Jour has successfully maintained her cloak of anonymity.

When you think about it, that in itself is a seriously impressive achievement in a twenty-first century world in which it is now virtually impossible for anyone of any notable interest to hide anything for six hours, let alone six days. And yet Belle has kept her identity secret - via a combination of careful planning, discretion (not even her agent knew her true identity) and a well-concealed money trail – which has eluded the attempts of the world’s journalists to out her.

Other anonymous bloggers have been quickly identified and exposed, often within days. But Belle has kept the newspapers, literary critics and a curious public in the dark. It has variously been thought that she was a well-known author under a nom de plume, a man writing titillating male fantasy for other men, or an entirely fictional creation.

For six years, we have all been chasing wild geese.

Until today.

In an interview with India Knight - one of the staunchest critics of Belle's books - in today's Sunday Times, Dr Brooke Magnanti, a 34 year old Bristol research scientist, has finally stepped out of the shadows and publicly claimed her alter ego.

The interview makes interesting reading. She is as articulate and intelligent as you would expect from someone with a PhD and a pre-Belle de Jour history of scientific blogging. And she also seems fully responsible for her own actions. One of the most common accusations levelled at Belle has been the way her blog has seemingly glamorized the sex trade, but she in no way denies the less salubrious side to prostitution; it is more that her experiences – some real, some fictional - were at the other end of the scale. The simple facts as Brooke/Belle relates them are that she became an escort as a means to make ends meet without the need for skills or training. It’s not necessarily a solution most of us would have adopted, but it suggests a degree of pragmatism over aspiration in terms of career choice.

Now, the exact nature of truth is always an elusive thing, and it can often be difficult to separate it from carefully crafted, self-serving fiction. Indeed, in the hours since the newspaper’s publication, several people have already come forward claiming to have been previously aware of Belle’s hidden identity, and the suspicion is that Brooke Magnanti’s revelations, rather than being purely voluntary, are little more than pre-emptive action. (The interview mentions the looming threat of a whistle-blowing ex.)

Regardless, it’s hard to criticise. Belle de Jour remains who she has always been; the only real difference is we can now put a name to her.

Palin bends the truth (again)

Another high-profile woman whose book, Going Rogue, is due to be published this coming week, is already guaranteed a place at the top of the bestseller lists.

Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential nominee. The darling of the conservative right, with her gun-totin’, moose-huntin’, anti-abortion hockey mom image. The embodiment of all that is evil to many others.

The Palin PR machine is already in overdrive. For instance, she will appear on Oprah tomorrow as part of a promotional tour which could easily – and probably accurately - be interpreted as the first step of a three-year campaign for the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nomination. Already we have seen teasers of some of the juicier morsels from her book, from which it is clear – if we did not know already - that Sarah Palin is a woman who (a) ensures nothing she does remains anonymous and (b) clearly believes in “blame first, accept responsibility later (preferably never)” as a modus operandi.

In Going Rogue, Palin squarely refuses to accept any responsibility for the Republicans’ failure at the polls last November, instead pointing the finger unwaveringly at John McCain, his aides and anyone else unfortunate enough to stray within her blast radius. Her abysmal performance in an infamous TV interview with CBS’s Katie Couric – memorably lampooned by 30 Rock's Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live (and easily found on YouTube) - is explained away by Couric’s supposed bias and 'badgering'.

Judge for yourself whether the exchange below is a result of bias and badgering, or the performance of a barely articulate individual who is dangerously out of her depth.

Palin: "Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land … boundary that we have with … Canada."

Couric: "Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials."

Palin: "Well, it certainly does because our … our next door neighbours are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of ... We have trade missions back and forth. We … we do … it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where … where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is … from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to … to our state."

So, you tell me: Belle de Jour or Sarah Palin. Who, really, is prostituting themselves here? Who is distorting the truth more? And who would you trust? The established bestselling author recounting her time as a high-class escort, or the soon-to-be bestselling author attempting to rewrite history to further her unbridled lust for higher office?

See it through a boy's eyes

I was watching last year's Christmas episode of the excellent 30 Rock last night - just the right side of diabetes-inducing levels of schmaltz - and it's got me thinking about how having a child has completely changed my attitudes towards the holiday season.

(As an aside, isn't it funny how easily conditioned we have become in the UK to watching watching seasonal episodes of US programmes out of sync? It doesn't feel at all odd to be watching a Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas episode in the middle of summer.)

Anyway, Christmas. 

It's not that I've become all bah-humbug about the most wonderful time of the year (as the old Andy Williams song goes), but it would be fair to say that, for me, the magic had gone out of it some time ago. I think it happened at the point I realised that I was earning enough money that, if I wanted something, I could simply go out and buy it. And that's usually exactly what I would do.

To avoid present-giving disappointment, we now have an embargo in place where I am not supposed to buy myself anything after the beginning of November; instead it is added to my Christmas wish list. Which is fine, and I do understand the need for it - after all, it saves a lot of fiddling around with receipts and returning unwanted gifts - but it also means that I end up having to wait up to eight weeks for something I could easily have bought myself today. And then consequently leads to me rushing out to buy all the things on my list that weren't given as presents.

Honestly, I'd really rather have cash or some small token gift to unwrap on Christmas morning. It's the thought that counts. Really.

However, Christmas is a bit different when you see it through a boy's eyes (that's Jamelia, for those of you who have spotted that I'm inserting song titles at every possible opportunity). Last weekend I took Isaac to our local garden centre to burn off a bit of excess energy - boy, does he have plenty of that! - and discovered that they had just put out all their Christmas stuff, ranging from illuminated snowmen for the front garden to cuddly toys (that's Roachford, for eagle-eyed 80s pop spotters) to £250 artificial trees with built-in blinking lights.

Ordinarily, I'd have turned up a snobbish nose and walked straight out again, but to see Zac's reaction when confronted with a veritable forest of colourfully-lit trees - he stood there for fully five minutes rapt with attention and repeatedly exclaiming "Wow!" - made my day. And it was the same when he discovered the baubles, and the model Christmas villages, and the animatronic polar bears. (I'm not joking - see below.)

He lapped it all up; in the end, I had to physically drag him out after an hour so we could go home for lunch.

This year will be the first time - he's two in early December - he will have any real understanding of the concept of Christmas, so it's his first experience of all things shiny and garish. (He already gets the idea of presents, although he hasn't yet realised that not all wrapped-up boxes are meant for him; I spent a lot of time trying to stop him from unwrapping all the decorative presents placed under the trees!)

Already I'm busy picking out various odds and sods he might like - I bought a couple of small baubles he took a fancy to at the garden centre - and accumulating a variety of stocking-fillers for him to tear into on Christmas morning. Military campaigns have been less precisely planned.

So now, for the first time in years, I'm really looking forward to Christmas, as opposed to dreading fighting the screaming hordes for the last Nok Tok talking doll in an overcrowded shop playing incessant seasonal muzak. (We've already ordered all his presents online, anyway.) Not because anything has changed with me; I know I will - gratefully - receive the usual array of books, CDs, DVDs etc (and then buy everything else later) on the day, but because I know Zac is going to love all the seasonal rituals, from the opening of wrapped presents to the excesses of Christmas lunch (he loves a good roast; he takes after his father).

The pleasure may be an entirely vicarious one, but I'm still more excited about this Christmas than any other in years. That has to be a good thing. (Fine Young Cannibals, incidentally.)

Twitter in newspaper form? How quaint (and potentially brilliant)

I've just signed up to Twitter Times, a recently launched service which takes a ‘new media’ outlet (Twitter) and offers its users an ‘old media’ solution for sifting through their feeds for popular news and blog posts from people they follow, delivering it in the form of a personalised newspaper, sorted by recency (is that a word?!?) and frequency.

Project leader Maxim Grinev explains the basic principle behind the service, saying, "From the massive volume of daily news the most interesting ones are those actively discussed by people you follow, your friends, respected persons and celebrities you admire."

It is still in its testing phase, so some of the functionality is apparently a bit ropey, but I’ll happily forgive its teething problems if it manages to develop into an effective and relevant filter for interesting content. I only follow about 90 people on Twitter, but this equates to 250-300 tweets dripping through my feed on a typical day, which means I tend to skim my feed a few times a day and will only actually read or click through on links for maybe 20%. No doubt I am missing some hidden gems in the 80% I ignore, but life’s too short to carefully read them all and if Twitter Times can help me unearth these without having to spend the whole of my life physically attached to my phone/PC, then I’ll become a happy and regular subscriber.

(Incidentally, I read an article earlier this week that claimed the average Facebook user spends three days a year on the site. Okay, once you have recovered from the sensationalist headline and done the maths that’s actually only 12 minutes a day, but it’s nonetheless easy to see how easily and insidiously social media can take over your life – and how potentially valuable a tool like Twitter Times can be to help social media addicts reclaim their lives.)

Personally, I think Twitter Times is a great concept which marries new and old media to simplify our ever-expanding world. It’s a bit like the Ellis Island of Twitter, processing millions of entries and turning away the undesirables. Whether it proves to be truly effective or ends up being overtaken by better, more agile me-toos remains to be seen, but Grinev should be applauded for attempting to provide a much-needed service which addresses a growing issue for people like me, for whom there never seem to be enough hours in the day to keep our Facebook statuses up to date, or to catch up with contacts on LinkedIn, or to write our blogs, or – perish the thought – to venture outside into the big wide world every now and then.

Diet - a four-letter word, but a necessary evil

Right, you heard it hear first. No more half-hearted mucking around. I am officially back on the diet again for November.

Despite playing sport regularly throughout school and my twenties, I have always been slightly overweight, even at my best. And, in common with many people, my weight has been gradually creeping up over the years, bringing a load of health and self-image issues with it.

As an adult, my ideal weight is probably somewhere slightly north of 14st, a benchmark I haven't been below since the age of 16. I can't recall when I first topped 15st - it was probably some time during my A levels - but I can remember with some horror the first time I realised my weight had crept above 16st - it was the summer leading up to my 20th birthday, and I had piled on about 20 pounds while rehabilitating a knee injury.

Although I managed to lose all that weight over the summer, I have been fighting - and slowly losing - a yo-yo battle against the bulge ever since. After a couple of bad years, I lost about 15 pounds to settle at around 14st 7lbs before our wedding in 1997. I gained maybe 20 pounds during my MBA (1998-9), topping 16st once again. And since then, I have oscillated up and down either side of, initially, the 16st mark - and more recently 17st.

In fact, the last time I was even remotely in sight of 15st was four years ago, which was the last time I was 100% focussed on losing weight and getting fit. At the time, I was going to the gym regularly and walking 15-20 miles a week while winding down before my departure from the BBC, having just returned from completing the Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand. And while no one would ever have mistaken me for a marathon runner, it was the fittest and lightest I had been for a fair while, tipping the scales at 15st 3lbs.

That was then, though; this is now. Since 2005, my weight has steadily increased, a trend occasionally interrupted by post-Christmas bouts of half-hearted dieting, to the point where I returned from our late summer getaway in Cornwall having put on five pounds in five days to attain a new personal worst of 18st 1lb. That meant I had gained 40 pounds -nearly three stone - in four years.

Okay, I've managed to lose all that bonus weight already just by returning to a sensible eating pattern, but even so that's pretty depressing, particularly knowing we are about to enter the diet-unfriendly Christmas party season.

As I see it, my problem is threefold. Firstly, I'm getting older, which makes it harder for me to lose weight. Secondly, I need to eat less and avoid my not infrequent tendency to graze without thinking, something I tend to do more when I'm bored. (It has been a relatively quiet time at work for the last few months, which doesn't help.) And lastly, I've stopped doing any kind of regular physical activity.

While I can't do anything about the ageing process, I can control the other two. And the lack of exercise really hit home last night when I went out bowling with work and returned with aches and strains all over my body which reminded me just how unused I have become to any remotely strenuous exertion.

So, the not-exactly-rocket-science plan for the next four weeks is:

1. Locate willpower, and switch to 'on' (and then keep it on for more than a week at a time)

2. Eat less - and in particular stop snacking

3. Dust down the exercise bike, walk rather than drive into town, use the stairs at work etc (but not be too discouraged if there is no immediate step-change in my fitness)

This morning, the scales reported my weight as 17st 10lbs. I want to have lost (at least) five pounds by the end of the month - i.e.achieve a target weight of 17st 5lbs - a significant but achievable amount. Then, after hopefully limiting the damage through December, I need to try to get down under 17st by, say, next Easter; I reckon that will equate to a target loss of nearly a pound a week once I have put my Christmas weight on.

That's still 30 pounds or more shy of where I ought to be, but I can't really get my head around such a big task at the moment. One step at a time.

There we go. I have set down my target in writing now, rather than half-committing to it in my usual, wishy-washy fashion. So here goes.

Now where did I put those carrots?