'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' prostitute's true identity revealed

At long last, the prostitute popularized on the Showtime series "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" has revealed her true identity.

Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a 34-year-old research scientist, told the UK's Sunday Times that she's the former London call girl that had maintained the successful blog, "Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl."

Magnanti had worked as a prostitude beginning in 2003 for 14 months for a London escort agency while she was writing her PhD thesis. She had been desperate for rent money, hated being in debt and did not "object to the concept" of having sex for money.

She decided to come out mainly because the pressure of maintaining anonymity had been weighing on her and partly because an old boyfriend was threatening to spill her secret.

Previous to her coming out, speculation ran wild as to who Belle de Jour -- named for the Luis Bunuel film starring Catherine Deneuve as bored housewife who spends her afternoons as a prostitute -- really was and guesses included chick lit author Isabel Wolff and even journalist Toby Young, "Top Chef" judge and author of "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People."

Magnanti currently has a boyfriend who had been aware of her sordid past, a past she revealed to her team of all-women research scientists within the past few months. She specializes in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health.

The Belle de Jour persona had been criticized for glamorizing prostitution. The show "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" starring Billie Piper began in the UK and has been airing in America on Showtime.

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