From the Daily Mail: Who IS Belle de Jour? by Paul Bracchi.

SHE ARRIVED at his flat in Chelsea Harbour in her trademark stockings
and stilettos. Her client was ex-public school - the kind of young man,
she thought to herself, who 'says chin-chin before a drink' and was a
'fan of Boris Johnson'.

'So what do you want to do?' she asked seductively. 'I want to make love
to you,' came the reply. 'Like the full-on Barry White kind?' she said,
teasingly raising her eyebrows. 'Oh, yes,' he said, smiling. 

Over the past months there have been dozens of such illicit
assignations, including the investment banker who paid for a hotel room
near Bond Street, the psychoanalyst from Mayfair, the
Chardonnay-drinking gent from Waterloo, the engineer, and the senior
law-enforcement officer. 

How do we know? Because the high-class call-girl in question has been
chronicling her sexual exploits in a diary on the internet, using the
name Belle de Jour after the acclaimed Sixties film in which Catherine
Deneuve played a bored housewife who became a prostitute. The modern
Belle claims to be an English Jewish girl in her 20s who studied arts at
university and now lives in Islington, North London. She is well read
and enjoys French and Italian classics. She admires Shakespearean actors
such as Antony Sher. She wears Chanel nail varnish. She shops at Harvey
Nichols. She has a dazzling array of lingerie. 

Naturally, she is something of a connoisseur in this department. For
example, 'there are Work Knickers' (which tend to be 'big and lacy . . .
call it the logic of the hourly rate. The more there is to take off, the
better value they think they've had') and 'Boyfriend Knickers' (which
tend to be 'Small. Thongs. Take it off with your teethtype stuff.') 

Her experiences - one might call her a top-shelf Bridget Jones - have
been read avidly by thousands of people all over the world. Predictably,
Belle has now signed lucrative book deals in Britain and the U.S. 

Indeed, we know rather a lot about Belle. Except, of course, her true
identity, which has been the subject of frenzied speculation in
publishing circles. Rumours abound. There are even those who even insist
Belle is a he, not a she. 

THE LIST of possible contenders is long and eclectic, and has included
author Isabel Wolff ('It's hilarious that people think it's me, but it's
not), journalist Toby Young ('I'm extremely flattered that people think
anyone would pay to have sex with me but, alas, I'm not her'), Rowan
Pelling, editor of the Erotic Review magazine ('It's true, I have never
been seen in the same place at the same time as Belle, but it's not
me'), even Alastair Campbell, who in his younger days wrote the sex
diary of a Riviera Gigolo in Forum magazine. In fact, the hunt for
Belle, which shows no sign of abating, is worthy of a book in itself.
Among the other possible suspects are a streetwise literary agent with
an eye for the main chance, a distinguished professor who helped convict
the American 'Unabomber' and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, the
daughter of church-going parents living in Manchester who emerged last
week as the 'prime suspect'. The first chapter, if we may put it like
that, begins last October when the anonymous daily scribblings of a
'working prostitute' started to be posted on the internet. 

The author, apparently, lives somewhere in the capital, has a boyfriend
who sends her loving text messages (her Jewish parents are oblivious to
her profession) and is put in touch with clients by an Eastern European
madam who muddles the names of hotels, leaving Belle scrambling to reach
customers before their desire ebbs. 

Her diary is littered with literary and cultural references - like her
visits to the Royal Academy and the V&A - as well as the titillating (a
few days after introducing herself she informs us that she bought £60
worth of underwear at Selfridges), salacious and, the frankly
unprintable. Very little, in fact, of what happens behind the doors of
plush penthouse apartments and posh hotel rooms is left to the
imagination.

Like the time 'I rang the bell of a building in Mayfair; no answer from
the speaker - he buzzed me up. He opened the door of the flat and
disappeared into the kitchen for a drink. Inside it was clean, almost
sterile. Smoky glass mirrors everywhere...' It quickly became a cult
hit. Two things, however, transformed the diary into a phenomenon.
First, Belle won a Guardian newspaper award for her 'blog' (as in
web-log). Second, she began seeking a publishing deal. Enter literary
agent Patrick Walsh, who now represents her. Walsh is a master of clever
marketing. He once struck a deal for an unknown sci-fi writer, claiming
it was worth £1 million, and was the agent for Anna Pasternak's
controversial and widely derided Princess In Love, about James Hewitt's
affair with Princess Diana. He introduced his protˇgˇe to Helen
Garnons-Williams, an editor at publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
The meeting, so the story goes, took place at his office in Soho and he
made Ms Garnons-Williams sign a confidentiality agreement. Belle's bank
account details were also said to have been changed to 'make sure she
can't be tracked down'. Nor was there any auction for the book because,
according to Walsh, it made it easier to keep her identity under wraps.
It sounds like just clever hype. Walsh, of course, says it's not. 'She
really is a call-girl,' he said. Whatever the truth, he has now secured
a five-figure book deal for Belle in the UK and a six-figure one with
Warner Books in the U.S. So Belle, it seems, has become very wealthy,
indeed - before her diary has even gone on sale. In different
circumstances, that is where the tale of the internet call-girl might
have ended- at least for the moment. Except that a few days ago Belle de
Jour was 'identified' by renowned literary detective Don Foster, who had
been approached by The Times to try to track her down. 

Professor Foster, who lecturers at Vassar College in New York, studied
Belle's use of collective nouns, hyphens, brackets, italics, compound
verbs, and even her rather careless use of commas. Then there was her
use of the word 'cringeworthy' rather than 'cringeworthy', and the
phrase 'suffice to say' rather than 'suffice it to say.' He typed all
these details into the internet and searched for anyone who used them in
their writing. The linguistic fingerprint, it emerged, matched that of
someone else apart from Belle de Jour. He claimed Belle wasn't a London
call-girl at all, but a 33-year-old previously published author from
Manchester, called Sarah Champion. Could this really be true? Well,
Professor Foster certainly has excellent credentials. He had unmasked
Joe Klein as the author of the Bill Clinton satire Primary Colors, and
has worked on a number of high-profile criminal investigations with the
FBI. 

FURTHERMORE, Ms Champion does share some characteristics with Belle.
Both have a passion for obscure bands, have spent time in Manchester (Ms
Champion was born there), are widely read in contemporary literature and
show detailed knowledge of South London. In 2002, Ms Champion was living
in West Norwood, less than a mile from the A23, which Belle describes as
separating her from her boyfriend. Ms Champion, who was tracked down to
San Francisco where she's been living, denies she is Belle. Even so, she
has been dragged into the plot. 

How embarrassing for her retired parents, devout Methodists, who have
been forced to deny that their daughter is a prostitute. They live in a
two-bedroom, red-brick terrace in Manchester from where her mother,
Elaine, 67, told the Mail: 'It's totally untrue. I am quite embarrassed
about it because I don't know if our friends and family might see it and
think it is true.' Those fears, it seems, are well founded. For Ms
Champion, who became the youngest-yet contributor to the New Musical
Express when she was 15, enjoyed a colourful reputation back in her
native city after she left school a year later. Indeed, her entry on the
Friends Reunited website reads: 'You may remember me as a quiet swot,
but be reassured, I went totally off the rails and never even finished
my A-levels.' 

In fact, she immersed herself in club culture and admits to
experimenting with drugs. She was linked with comedian Steve Coogan,
then a rising star on the Manchester comedy circuit, and in the Eighties
she was a contributor to City Life magazine before publishing
anthologies about the Manchester music scene. 

One of the sub-editors who checked her copy on City Life was Mike
Barnett. 'I have probably read more of Sarah's work than most,' he said.
'Her writing style is certainly similar to that of Belle de Jour. I
would not be at all surprised if it was her.' Another friend from those
days was writer and broadcaster Terry Christian, who presented Channel
4's cult show The Word. His verdict? 'Sarah could be Belle de Jour. She
does get a buzz out of shocking people.' A week ago, however, Ms
Champion penned an article for a Sunday broadsheet robustly denying she
was Belle: 'Ever since I found myself described as a wild child in a
local newspaper as a teenager, I dreaded that one day I would wake up to
find paparazzi outside my door. 'I have published a book of ecstasy drug
stories in the wake of Leah Betts's death, briefly dated a well known TV
comedian and shared a spliff with a former Beatle. But it never occurred
to me that what would finally bring the paparazzi to my door would be
something like an analysis of my use of commas.' 

BUT there is yet another twist in the plot. Professor Foster, the
literary detective, has now distanced himself from the recent report in
The Times which carried the headline Internet 'Call-Girl author
unmasked'. 

The article suggested Professor Foster had come up with Ms Champion's
name after entering examples of Belle's writing style into an internet
search engine and finding that it matched hers. 

In other words, The Times implied it was Professor Foster who had come
up with Miss Champion's name in the first place, plucking it, as it
were, from cyberspace. 

Not so, he says. He now claims it was The Times reporter who supplied
him with Miss Champion's name. He was told that the paper had contacted
her and she had, apparently, admitted being Belle. 'Never have I said,
either on or off the record, that Belle's identity has been established
by anything I have ever said or contributed. 

'I made it perfectly clear in a series of telephone conversations and
email exchanges with The Times, of which I have a complete record, that
Miss Champion is (only) a person of interest.' But, intriguingly, he
adds: 'I do think Miss Champion knows who Belle de Jour is.' Does he
think Ms Champion might be collaborating with someone? He wouldn't say.
But the Mail has uncovered another possible 'suspect' who now lives in
San Francisco. 

His name: Andrew Orlowski. Mr Orlowski is also a writer from Britain. He
has written about sex on the internet for The Independent newspaper. And
he is a close friend of ... Sarah Champion. Indeed, the two worked
together on short-lived publications in Manchester in the early
Nineties. Miss Champion, of course, is also based in San Francisco. 

Officially, at least, Belle - and the publishing team behind 'her' - are
adamant that their author has not been identified. Indeed, posted on her
website is the following message: 'The people who have been "outed" as
me are not me, and to those for whom it attracted unwarranted attention,
I apologise.' No doubt, we will eventually find out if that is the
truth.