This is the Diary of a London Call Girl, featured in many of the papers today. The blog is to be published as a book on 13th January. The bits I’ve read have been very well written, shocking, and entertaining.

In The Guardian’s second Best British Blog competition, Simon Waldman said:

The winner in this category however is Belle de Jour, the diary of a London call girl. There’s obviously a prurient and titillating element, but the quality of her writing took her blog well beyond that. Some judges were concerned it was a work of fiction, but even if it is, it remains an impressive piece of writing.

As Bruce Sterling, one of the judges said: “Archly transgressive, anonymous hooker is definitely manipulating the blog medium, word by word, sentence by sentence far more effectively than any of her competitors. It’s not merely the titillating striptease aspects that are working for her, but her willingness to use this new form of vanity publishing to throw open a great big global window on activities previously considered unmentionable . . . She is in a league by herself as a blogger.”

Cynthia Payne is less than convinced, and she certainly knows more about ‘the game’ that I do!

So this Belle de Jour is supposed to be on the game is she? A high-class hooker with high-class partners? Hmmm … I’m not convinced. I’m not an expert on literature or anything like that, but I do know a fair bit about sex and men, and this doesn’t sound like anything I have ever come across.

I have to say, Cynthia’s article is as interesting a read as the blog itself in many way, and you should probably have a look at both anyway, considering the blog is talk of the literary world (or so it would seem) at the moment. Worth a click.