Gossip

Belle de which jour, Andrew?

The Hunky Mouse is intrigued to hear that "Belle de Jour" has been outed. Apparently, it's our excellent colleague, the Register's Andrew Orlowski, in heavy disguise.

Or so, at any rate, the Independent has alleged.

In a story by Jonathan Brown this weekend, the paper poo-poohed Friday's "leak" in the Evening Standard, who outed another writer entirely. The Standard said Belle was Sarah Champion. So did the Manchester News. And who is Sarah Champion?

She's Andrew Orlowski's girlfriend.

As the Indy, rather cautiously, put it: "he is a man with whom she collaborated on a number of minor publications in the early years of the last decade." You could say that. But the Hunky Mouse doesn't believe it's Andrew, either. Nor, for that matter, do we think either Andrew or Sarah are call-girls.

We sniffed around one or two of Andrew's ex-colleagues. "All I can say," commented one, who will go unnamed as Kieren McCarthy, "is that if Andrew writes Belle de Jour, he's a much better writer than he's ever revealed in the pages of The Register ... "

The Indy said: "Described in some quarters as a cult figure, Mr Orlowski has a record of cultured sex writing on the internet. Yesterday, however, he was not taking any calls." Meaning, normally, he does take calls? Hm.

The Hunky Mouse would like it known that he (or she) is not a call girl, either. However, autographed items, far more genuine than some of the clearly fake tat available online - and indeed, authenticated by NewsWireless.net - are available at absurd prices here; and the Hunky Mouse assures purchasers that they will be signed Belle de Jour ... authentically, by the Hunky Mouse's own hand. State preference with order for old socks, used tissues, and hardly-soiled corn-plasters.

And Belle is, definitely, not Guy Kewney, publisher and editor of this site. We can say no more ...