Belle of the balls

Looks like everyone's favourite internet hooker has been getting a sound drubbing in her book reviews. I shouldn't think that will stop it becoming a big hit (unless, like me, you came to your senses when, on flicking through, you realised that you’re basically being asked to fork out good money for a weblog that’s not had the benefit of a proper edit and that’s already free to read online), but what interests me more is the question of her identity. Not that I'm bothered from a personal point of view if she turns out to be a small, ugly man with a snaggle tooth and an over-active imagination. I am interested from a work perspective, however. I actually interviewed BdJ for one of my first pieces for a glossy. It was before she got the book deal. In internet terms she'd been famous for ages, but in the real world I managed to beat (I think) everyone to it and I cling to that imagined glory with a really rather tragic amount of pride. Unfortunately, she got the book deal pretty much as soon as my interview was published, leaving my small, inoffensive piece looking a rather backward and redundant. Not least because I was so delighted that she'd agreed to let me interview her that I didn't take the trouble to ask her if she was a) real b) a man.

In my defence I was doing the piece for a women's magazine and the interview was prefaced by an explanation of what this newfangled "blogging" malarky business is all about. Going into the already-established online obsession about her true identity seemed a bit of a waste of time if the audience didn't even know what a weblog was. Plus, assumed she’d give a similarly ridiculous and nonsensical reply as she gave in her FAQ ("A bored journaliste could probably fake this blog but I'm not that clever"), which, quite frankly, seemed like a waste of time for all of us.

When the hysterical articles started to appear in the papers, I felt mildly irked for not taking the opportunity to do a bit of wild speculation myself. Eurotrash's determination that BdJ is in fact a man caused me to question again why I didn't question her more. Ignoring my natural, nigh-on moronic tendency to take everything people say at face value, the fact is her replies to my queries just seemed to ring true, even after I’d put on my cynical face. Rachel Cooke in the New Statesmen says that “[it’s her] lack of embellishment that finally convinces you of the authenticity of her strangely banal document” and that’s what made me think that her interview was real. When I sent her the questions I was expecting long sparklingly witty replies. What I got was straight and simple answers without embellishment or anecdote.

That’s not to say that she didn’t come across as rather nice (nicer, in fact, than she seems on her weblog), but she didn’t seem to be aware of the tricks of short glossy interviews – that is, that you wibble on for as long as possible in the knowledge that they’ll edit you down into a pithy and polished slice of humanity. The finished interview came out pretty well in the end, but the answers just weren’t quite clued up enough to be the work of a pro (journalist, that is). A male? Maybe. A fake? Quite possibly. A “bored journaliste”? No way. There’s a chance, of course, that she was being deliberately novice in order to flummox me, but I seriously doubt there’s a professional writer in the UK with a small enough ego. If there’s even one out there able to resist the urge to unleash the full force of their wit and creativity to the world when given a sniff of a chance, I’m an internet hooker.