I'm Belle de Jour and so's my wife!

Here's a thing. I realise I'm late to the party, both in the blogging sense and in the sense of being terribly curious about the true identity of Belle de Jour, but I read her entire blog over the last few days, as well as a few related articles, book reviews and pieces of self-serving tripe masquerading as journalism, and in among all the fatuous notions (she's Toby Young, she's Lisa Hilton), there was passing mention of Martin Amis. He's mentioned in the blog, you see, when one of her clients makes a particularly lascivious suggestion and she identifies it as a line from London Fields, after which they have a terribly self-conscious conversation about Amis. Now, I love that book - I've ruined two copies - and I couldn't place the line. But what I noticed was that the conversation was alarmingly reminiscent of those that Amis wrote between John Self (the narrator) and Martin Amis (a writer) in Money. (In Money, for those unfortunate enough to have never read it, Amis employs the slightly heavy-handed device of introducing a character called Martin Amis, and gives him all the reader's fears, as if the moral disgust that permeates every word weren't enough to convince the reader that this is satire.) Amis likes nothing more than to offer critiques of his own work through the voice of others (John Self has a go in Money; London Fields' narrator Samson Young and anti-heroine Nicola Six both have things to say about works by "Mark Asprey"). Belle's discussion of Time's Arrow seemed to be very much in that style.

Am I suggesting she is actually Martin Amis? No. Amis is far too busy writing increasingly mediocre books to have the time for something like BdJ. But then you notice the other little idiosyncrasies. Belle likes to italicise "Oh no". There's an oddly prurient relish to her descriptions of time with clients (as noted, Amis disgusts himself when he writes, yet is morbidly fascinated by how much more disgusting he can get).

There are more. I'll read it again. But if this girl's for real, she's an even bigger Amis geek than I am, because I still can't place that line in London Fields.

If you're wondering, it was, "I want to write my name in come all over you." If you happen to know the book better than I do (in which case you are Martin Amis) then do leave a comment and help me out.

Still to come: every other post I'll ever make!