Belle De Jour revealed to be

[onebatmother]

...a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol.

Well what do you expect. It's the wheels of the glorious free market turning perfectly. No need for expensive state handouts to fund future research scientists. As soon as they turn 18 let them go out and sell their own bodies for tuition fees. Keeps the tax bill down and everyone's a winner. It is the purest form of capitalism, the most basic transaction unpolluted by outdated notions of morality, or impertinent questions about what might be good for Society. After all, there's no such thing as we all know.

well said, Zeph - though I worry you will explode this side of the GE. Pace yourself

wilf - djagetmy email, and this and that?

apparently her colleagues are being incredibly supportive

hohohoho

Bet they can't believe their luck. That's dinner party convos sorted for a decade at least.

i do feel a bit sorry for the boyf

the army not a good place to present a prossie gf.

In the Guardian she got to keep two thirds. Not that it makes much odds.

Onebat you are right. I can't even bear to think about the other side of the GE, and will certainly explode before it happens. Did you read Mark Lawson's comedy nightmare vision of the Tory future in Guardian Media today?

The only reason she outed herself was because the ex boyf was touting the story around Fleet Street.

Another theory is that she's a complete fantastist and none of this ever happened.

really nancy?
god it's all so bloody sad really.

in an entirely sentimental and doesn't-bear-examination way, I find it a bit poignant that she researches the effects of exposure to pesticides on foetuses and infants. So worthwhile.

A journalist friend of mine had to go and knock on her door last week and said she def came across as a rather needy, attention seeking type and a bit of a loon.

how sad and predictable. So you think she wouldn't have come out if she hadn't been forced? In that case I feel marginally more sympathetic to her as a person (rather than her as a construct )

..saw this at the w/end. No doubt she will have been heavily 'advised' to kiss and tell, though I understand that there was more than just kissing involved?

and in a dadsnet-style gratuitousness - she looks quite hot.

Says in the Guardian that she went public because "she had learned the Daily Mail was ready to publish a warts-and-all expose" after a Mail journalist (Nancy's friend??) turned up at her work.

Thanks for that enlightening contribution Pan.

Yes, she definitely only outed herself because she feared she was about to be exposed. But a couple of publications were on to her, DM being one of them.

no worries ZD and thanks for the critical feedback - didn't realise the threshold for 'enlightening' was so high round here!!

Why would the ex-boyfriend be "instantly dismissed" from the Army if his identity was revealed now?

perhaps we could just wheel him out during these kinds of discussions. Then none of us would need to form an argument, we'd all just know what we were talking about without exchanging a word .

lol onebat, quite

hey, whatever floats ya boat. i do feel a bit sorry for the ex blokey though.

im sort of finding it hard to get steamed up about it though really, i guess it saved her getting a student loan!

think id have kept quiet though. wonder how the DM was gonna prove it was her? couldnt she have just denied it?

Well, apparently, if you don't out yourself when the press are on to you (eg one paper gets in touch and tells you they have the info and they would like to offer you the chance to Tell Your Side Of The Story) you get it in the neck even more.

THough WRT money, authors (whether that's of sex books, memoirs or elegaic intellectual crime fiction) rarely get more than a third of the cover price of the book. Remember the bookshop gets a cut, the printer gets a cut, the publisher gets a cut...