La Belle Noiseuse

‘Belle de Jour’, the pseudonymous author of ‘The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl’, has allegedly been unmasked as Dr Brooke Magnanti a 34-year-old female research scientist at Bristol University, widely described as ‘blonde’.

Which is quite a surprise. Like most people, I’d always assumed her stuff was constructed by a committee of middle-aged men.

Actually, that’s not quite true. The only time I looked at her blog – about a year ago – I was convinced it had been written by a 30-something British woman of Indian origin. Why? Because her fixation on Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan (and the fact that she went to see his film Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi in its week of release) suggested someone with intimate knowledge of Indian cinema.

Here’s the entry:

lundi, décembre 15
“Speaking of cinema, delighted to notice in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi that Shah Rukh Khan has a left-side fang just like mine! Wonky teeth rule. Also that in undercover geek mode he looks distinctly like my father's older brother - am now uncertain whether it is strictly kosher to continue fancying SRK.”

An authority on sex, neurotoxicology and Bollywood, Dr Magnanti certainly sounds like fun. We can almost forgive her for borrowing the name of one of our all-time favourite films...