High-class call girl reveals hidden links to North

Nov 19 2009 by Lisa Hutchinson, The Journal

THE high-class prostitute whose memoirs were turned into a television series is a former Newcastle University researcher, she has revealed.

Dr Brooke Magnanti wrote under the pen name Belle de Jour to describe the encounters she had as a high-class call girl while earning money for her PhD.

This week the 34-year-old said she decided to unmask herself because the stress of the deceit was making her paranoid.

Dr Magnanti was employed at Newcastle University as a biostatistician research associate, and her racy on-line blogs were typed here on Tyneside.

Interest in her identity increased when her memoirs became a television series, Secret Diary of a Call Girl in 2007, staring Billie Piper.

And when the nation was talking about the risque series, Dr Magnanti remained tight-lipped and never revealed her secret while here in the North East.

Now living in Bristol and a research scientist for The Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, Dr Magnanti became a prostitute because she needed a job that left her enough time to complete her studies.

She kept her double life a secret even when she started the blog describing her experiences and the books which followed.

But in an interview, she has revealed she hid her double life from Newcastle University bosses when she applied for a job in 2006 and she took her hidden tales with her when she left in February this year.

Dr Magnanti, who ran the Great North Run in 2007, said she worked as a prostitute from 2003 to late 2004 while in London, and found it “so much more enjoyable” than her shifts in another job as a computer programmer.

She said: “I don’t want this massive secret over me any more,” and that she feared an ex-boyfriend might reveal the true identity of Belle de Jour. On her blog entry she said: “It feels so much better on this side.