Literary Girl in Oxford

I sit on a hard chair in a marquee beside my friend Little Miss Fetish (not her birth name in case you were wondering) waiting for Belle De Jour and India Knight, the journalist who will be interviewing Belle, to arrive. I am at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on a sunny Sunday afternoon. As I sit waiting I look around at the 30o strong crowd and I'm surprised that the average age must be mid-sixties. Indeed the front row is filled with septuagenarians. Perhaps they want some sex tips.

I ask members of the audience if they have read Belle's book or blog. A frail looking lady wearing a brightly coloured knitted jumper tells me she has not. A few others tell me they are not familiar with her work either. It seems they are here because of Belle's minor celebrity status rather than her literary talents. I wonder whether they would have come if they'd read her frank memoir Belle De Jour, Diary of a London Call Girl.

A lone man sitting on my left tells me he has not read the book but saw Belle in the paper. I ask why he is here and he answers he thinks "it's an interesting situation, someone with that sort of background going into that. Some people think it is distasteful but distasteful is not the same as being criminal." Randomly Anneka Rice is also in the audience at the back. She makes a quick escape when the interview finishes.

For those of you who have been in a hole for the past year and half Brooke Magnanti outed herself in The Sunday Times as author of the blog and subsequent book Belle De Jour, Diary of a London Call Girl. She started writing her blog in 2003, by 2004 she had 15000 readers. She is a research scientist and she maintains that she became a prostitute to pay her way through university so she could complete her PHD. She now works full time as a research scientist and is no longer a call girl.

Brooke is petite and wears a low cut floral top and long earrings. She tells the audience she would often sit on the tube, look up and down the carriage, and wonder how long it would take someone to pick her out as the prostitute in the crowd. She thinks people would go for the stereotype of the beautiful or slutty looking girl not the normal looking blonde girl wearing the designer suit.

It seems this is Brooke's first public appearance. India asks why she thinks so many people are present and Brooke, seeming genuinely baffled, says she does not know. It could be a testament to our celebrity culture that people will attend a talk by someone they have only read about fleetingly in the news or perhaps we are simply 300 voyeurs. When asked about her writing and the constant speculation, prior to her outing herself, that she must be a man Brooke says 'It's funny when people said I must be a man by the way I write I thought no, by the way I write I must be a scientist.'

Brooke is funny and witty throughout the interview and laughs when India suggests that she 'slipped into [prostitution] with ease'. In answer she says 'I was 27 slept around a bit, was a bit of a slag''.

We hear that her most embarrassing incident was when she saw a client at a friend's wedding but could not place him. In the end he came up to her and simply said 'hi' before walking off. The next morning she had to sit at an intimate breakfast with him and six others including her then boyfriend. It was, she concedes, the longest breakfast of her life.

When India opens questions to the floor Little Miss Fetish wants to know how to write good sex scenes. Belle tells her to "strip it down to its bare bones." I take down notes before realising that I won't exactly be using the advice in my novel, a book for children aged 8 - 12. Still it could be useful in the future.

A man in the audience asks, "How would you feel if your boyfriend had slept with prostitutes?", Brooke answers "I'd be alright with it." He persists, "Would you ask him about it." Brooke pauses for a moment, "only if it were hot."

Brooke tells us that she has been working on a novel for four years and that her favourite piece of her own writing is a short story called Malted.

In response to a question about whether she became a prostitute just to write about it Brooke says "14 months. That's a lot of people to have sex with just for a laugh."

That question is followed by someone wanting to know whether she orchestrated the media furore. She says something that accurately sums up public perceptions of people in the media "we've gotten used to being cynical and we're not used to people saying this is what happened and this is how it happened."

At one point Brooke has to defend herself when a lecturer says she has PHD students who have not got into prostitution to pay for their funding and fees. Brooke answers that she went into it for a specific reason and came out of it, that the funding in this country for oversees students is a joke and that she would not have made enough working in a bar or shop.

When pressed about whether she has become a mouthpiece for prostitutes Brooke explains that "the experiences are as different as the people in them."

After the interview Little Miss Fetish and I stand in the marquee looking at books and watch as Brooke has her photo taken. A young couple walk past and the man says to his girlfriend "I don't know why she left it so long to come out. It's obvious she wanted to be famous. Look at her she loves it." Can't win them all I guess.

So would I recommend her memoir? It is certainly gripping however I would not say it were erotic, in fact at times I found it quite the opposite. I did not feel it glamorised prostitution in the way that has been suggested in the press although it is eye opening. So yes I would recommend it but be warned this is a book to be read at home not on the commute to work unless you want everyone to see you blushing.