Has the author of the Belle du Jour books ever been identified?

Question

I've read a couple of articles where they say its a journalist but she is denying it.

Answer 1

Here's an article that gives the main suspects, all of whom have denied involvement:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2005/04/11/will_the_real_belle_de_jour_please_stand_up.html

Answer 2

‘Belle de Jour’ Identified as Male London Novelist, Stewart Home, 42

Rather than being a 29-year-old lady of the night, ‘Belle de Jour’ is in fact the male writer Stewart Home, 42, known under his own name for the novels in which he interweaves lurid pornographic descriptions with high brow literary and cultural criticism [1]
1) Stewart Who?

Theorist of multiple name use [2], radical cultural provocateur [3], ‘art terrorist’ [4], self confessed strategic ‘liar’ [5], veteran of numerous literary feuds [6], skilled self publicist, and above all an arch wind-up merchant [7], Home has previously written both under his own name and under the invented female moniker Karen Eliot [8]. Whereas his non-fiction concerns have remained in the world of culture theory, his fictional themes over the past 20 years have moved from political extremism to occultism to, in his most recent two novels, prostitution considered from the point of view of the female prostitute.

His referencing, often unmarked, of previous cultural works [9] — mainly avant-gardist but also popular — began at the start of his career in the early 1980s, and continues in his latest effort, supposedly the ‘authentic’ diaries of a prostitute writing under the name ‘Belle de Jour’. This was the working name of the prostitute protagonist of the 1968 film made by Spanish director Luis Buñuel, a leading Surrealist [10].

Few would deny Home’s skill at getting into character. His back-list includes works of skinhead, gay, and occult fiction. For a time, he has had cult followings among those who have taken his attitudes at face value in each of these areas. In actual fact, he has never been a skinhead, and he has never been either gay or an occultist — any more than he is a Jewish call-girl with traces of a Yorkshire accent. The Belle de Jour diaries are the latest, greatest success in a career that began more than 20 years ago.

All of his novels have contained copious quantities of pornography, usually sadomasochistic, interspersed with cultural theory and criticism, usually arcane. Titles include ********, No Pity, 69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess, and ****. He also distributes Necro Cards, for those who want to allow the use of their bodies for sexual gratification after death. Fifty thousand were handed out in Soho in 1999.

Not known for personal modesty, he publishes a website in the name of the Stewart Home Society [11]. This august-sounding body is his own creation. So were Praxis, Neoism and the Art Strike, three art movements in which he was the sole participant.

Answer 3

I think it is really a man and I think it is Nicholas Witchell the news reader

Answer 4

it was me