Belle's London calling

What's a girl to do? She's smart and university educated, but life in the Big Smoke doesn't come cheap, especially for one with such a costly lingerie habit as our heroine. A mounting overdraft and several inches of job rejection letters later, she hits on the no-so-novel notion of joining the world's oldest profession.

So begins this purportedly real-life, X-rated confessional. Originally posted online as a web-log, it drew thousands of hits a day, last year winning its anonymous authoress a six-figure publishing deal that has inflated with each successive news story.

A telly adaptation is bound for the small screen thanks to Channel Four, and the book, newly published here in the UK, will shortly be hitting the shelves in 14 other countries besides. Belle de Jour borrows her nom de guerre from an acclaimed Sixties Catherine Deneuve film, but just who is she?

This much we are told: a 20-something Yorkshire lass, she currently lives in Islington, New Labour's North London heartland. Her prose is strewn with literary references and she devours French and Italian classics - in the original. Still, despite the valiant sleuthing of Fleet Street's finest, Belle's true identity remains cloaked in mystery.

The latest dark rumours suggest that an under-worked, middle-aged hack lies behind the phenomenon. Could it be that Belle is a Beau? It would certainly explain some of the more blushingly clichéd sexual fantasies.

In between appointments, Belle slots in real dates and holidays, and treats us to excerpts from her 'A-Z Of London Sex Work' - tips on how to chat to clients ('Lie your head off. Think of it as proving ground for a future political career'), where to buy your knickers and how to smuggle whips into hotels. So far, so chick-lit.

When it comes to the steamy bits, this book is by turns coy and crass, less 'intimate' than gynaecological and somehow managing to be yet more un-erotic than that term suggests. She may be a high-class hooker, but this is very low-class erotica indeed. Is it genuine? The jury's out, but if media salivation translates into book sales, Belle may shortly be hanging up her whip for good.