Amy Winehouse was found dead in her apartment in London today … this according to several reports.
A press release from the Metropolitan Police, which doesn’t specifically name Winehouse, says:
“Police were called by London Ambulance Service to an address in Camden Square NW1 shortly before 16.05hrs today, Saturday 23 July, following reports of a woman found deceased.
On arrival officers found the body of a 27-year-old female who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Enquiries continue into the circumstances of the death. At this early stage it is being treated as unexplained.”
Last month, Winehouse canceled her European tour after a performance in Serbia where she seemed completely out of it.
This is a breaking story and few details are available. Sad and bizarre.
Broadway actors are aiming a familiar lament at Hollywood stars: They’re taking our jobs!
Reuters (“Hollywood stars at center of Broadway backlash“):
Every year, Hollywood celebrities head to Broadway where they get plenty of attention for their headlining efforts.
The Tony Awards, being presented on June 12, are the ultimate judge of the skills of any stage actor, famous or not, and many lesser-known performers worry that the value of the award diminishes as film stars continue to take them home.
Last year’s star-studded broadcast disheartened many New York actors, including Hunter Foster, who started the Facebook group Give the Tonys Back to Broadway!! in an effort to combat the Tinseltown effect. With the now almost 9,000-member group, Foster hopes to restore the ceremony as a beacon of hope for the next generation of stage performers.
Whether stage actors like his sister, Sutton Foster — nominated this year for her performance in “Anything Goes” — will disappear from Broadway’s future if the Tonys continue to focus on Hollywood stars is debatable. Many actors appearing on Broadway — including Al Pacino, a nominee this year for “The Merchant of Venice” — began their careers on stage, but their mass appeal comes from their films.
“I have worked my ass off to get to where I am, so I understand that strug
[...]
A star can be an economic necessity for a Broadway show, and Michael Riedel, New York Post theater columnist and host of PBS’s “Theater Talk,” does not think Hollywood stars take jobs away from New York actors. “If you didn’t have these celebrities, a lot of these shows wouldn’t be produced,” he said. “All of these shows have people in them who are not movie stars and they’re all working.”
A Tony represents the Holy Grail for a stage actor and can significantly boost a performer’s career, whereas film and television actors are already honored with awards like Oscars and Emmys. Having widely recognized actors swoop in and secure a Tony nomination can be upsetting to some, said Garrett Eisler of the blog The Playgoer, as there are limited spots.
According to Eisler, stars have driven Broadway ticket sales throughout history, but “what changed is the definition of who is a star.” In the 1950s and ’60s, the box office names were Robert Preston, Rex Harrison, and Zero Mostel, who had some fame from film but whose main medium was the stage. “A Broadway star could really be a star,” Eisler said, recognizing that Patti LuPone is one of the few who fits this bill today. “Now you can’t be a star unless you’re a Hollywood star.”
The Internet democratizes entertainment, and a stage performer will never receive the same size audience for a Broadway show that another actor will receive for a film or a television series. ”There’s been a generational shift,” Eisler explained, noting that today’s generation of young people is the first to come of age with the Internet. “Certain stars can’t become household names without appearing on multiple platforms.”
Tony winner and New York stage veteran Victoria Clark acknowledged her win for “The Light in the Piazza” in 2005 helped launch her career and turned her into more of a “known quantity.” Her role as Mother Superior in this year’s “Sister Act,” for which she is nominated, came to her in part because of her name and the connections she made through her past work. ”Jerry Zaks could have gone after anybody between the ages of 45 and 80 for this part,” she said, referring to the show’s director. “There’s a message to our directors: Support the people that supported you when you first started your career and go back to those people and give them a shot.”
Celebrities coming to Broadway take work away from New York theater actors, according to Clark, but she also says the industry should not separate actors into film, TV, and stage categories. “It’s our culture that segregates us,” she argued. “If we were actors in any other country, we’d all be doing everything, no questions asked.”
This is a bizarre lament. If actors who have gained fame in the movies are more able to attract an audience, why shouldn’t they headline Broadway plays? It would be one thing if their skills didn’t translate to the stage but nobody here is making that claim. Rather, people who have chosen to make their careers under the lights of Broadway are complaining that they’re not famous enough. That’s just too bad.
Barbara Billingley of “Leave it to Beaver” and “Airplane” fame has died at the ripe old age of 94.
Barbara Billingsley, who wore a classy pearl necklace and dispensed pearls of wisdom as America’s quintessential mom on “Leave it to Beaver,” has died at age 94, a family spokeswoman said Saturday.
The actress passed away at 2 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) Saturday at her home in Santa Monica, California, after a long illness, spokeswoman Judy Twersky said. A private memorial is being planned.
Actor Jerry Mathers, who played Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, called Billingsley a lifetime mentor. “Barbara was a patient advisor and teacher. She helped me along this challenging journey through life by showing me the importance of manners, and respect for others,” Mathers said in a statement. “She will be missed by all of her family, friends, fans and most especially by me.”
Tony Dow, who played Beaver’s brother, Wally Cleaver, also reflected on Billingsley’s legacy. “She was as happy as a lark being recognized as America’s mom,” Dow told CNN’s Don Lemon. “She had a terrific life and had a wonderful impact on everybody she knew, and even people she didn’t know.”
The actress won a new legion of fans in a brief, but memorable, scene in the 1980 send-up movie “Airplane.” “Oh, stewardess. I speak jive,” Billingsley said in her role — much different from her June Cleaver persona — as an elderly passenger comforting an ill man on the flight. She, the sick man and his seat companion engaged in street-slang banter.
In a different age, that would have led to the type of career resurgence Betty White is currently enjoying. But Dow is right: A great, long life.
Legend has it that Orville Redenbacher paid an advertising agency a pretty penny for advice on what to name his popcorn company and they came back with “Orville Redenbacher.” It worked out pretty well for him but, in hindsight, he could have come up with that name on his own.
It seems the folks at TBS went through a similar process for naming Conan O’Brien’s new show.
There’s been much speculation about whether Team Coco would keep things simple, by using some variation of O’Brien’s name (The Coco Show!). Or maybe they’d go crazy and riff on the after-hours time slot (Up Late with Conan) or O’Brien’s new status as an Internet icon (Conan 3.0). In the end, simplicity won out — although, sadly, Conan’s first choice for a name wasn’t available. “I wanted one word that captured my essence, and ‘Oprah’ was already taken,” O’Brien tells Vulture. So enough Ryan Seacrest–esque stalling: Just what is the title? We’ll let the redheaded one tell you himself, via video.
Yup, the name of O’Brien’s third late-night show is … Conan. Show insiders tell Vulture that O’Brien and team pretty much settled on this name weeks ago, but like so many things in Hollywood, choosing a name isn’t always simple. You have to clear the title legally, to make sure nobody else has the rights to it, and that’s even true when the name is your own. For the last few weeks, O’Brien’s army of lawyers and TBS have been doing their due diligence making sure it’s okay to use “Conan” as the show’s title. One stumbling block could have been the Conan the Barbarian franchise, which has included comics, books, films, and, in 1997, a short-lived TV series called Conan. But now, it’s clear that all issues have been worked out.
The suspense was killing me.
Source: NY Mag – “Conan O’Brien Announces the Name of His New TV Show on Vulture!“
Yesterday, the social media sites were buzzing with the story of Jenny, a lovely young lass who quit her job in style, sending a series of photos with a dry erase board to the entire office and outing her erstwhile boss, Spencer, as a leering jackass who spent all his time playing Farmville.
But, alas, this was almost certainly a hoax. Gawker’s Ryan Tate calls it “The Quitting Tale That Suckered the Whole Internet.” MediaMemo‘s Peter Kafka apparently was the first to figure it out:
The story showed up this morning on theChive.com, a dude-centric site run by brothers John and Leo Resig, who own a series of photo/humor sites. (That’s Leo on the left.) Before that, the Resigs ran a site called Derober, which features doctored photos of celebrities in their underwear.
And Derober’s moment in the spotlight came back in December 2007, when it made up a story about Donald Trump leaving a $10,000 tip on a $82.27 bill. The story was convincing enough to fool Fox News and the New York Post (both of which are owned by News Corp., which also owns this site).
Apparently, some of the morning shows have been trying to book Jenny, too. Who, it’s being reported, is actually an actress named Elyse Porterfield.
Aside from the Resig brothers connection, there are all manner of indications that the story is dubious.
The posing and photo quality are both professional
Why would a boss spying on his employee’s Internet habits give the codes to his secretary?
Why would Jenny think being a secretary was a route to becoming a broker?
Why would she consider being referred to as a HOPA grounds for quitting?
Why does she think HOPA and HPOA are the same thing, anyway?
It’s plausible that a broker is spending a lot of time on Scottrade. But Farmville? Seriously?
The story was “broken” on a professional comedy site
It’s amazing how often these things go viral without people getting suspicious.
UPDATE: TheChive has confessed to their little hoax.
Perez Hilton passes on speculation that Ricky Gervais, who starred in the British original version of “The Office,” will reprise his role of David Brent and replace Steve Carrell on the American version of the show.
THIS is brilliant!
And frankly, it’s the only plausible way to keep the show going after Steve Carell signs off in May!
Now that the actor plans to retire his character, Michael Scott, on the HIGHlarious show The Office, producers are scrambling to figure out how exactly to continue the series in his absence, and they’re reportedly toying with the idea of bringing in the man that started it all – Ricky Gervais’ horiffically uncomfortable David Brent from the original, UK series!
Effing AMAZING! Inspired!
And think about the built-in fanbase that would tune in just to see Gervais play that awful character again! It would COMPLETELY revive the series!
Executive Producer Paul Lieberstein is toying with the idea, and says:
“We talked about it today for a while. It’s not the leading idea… [but] it’s not a dead idea. I don’t know how David Brent could take Michael Scott’s place because it would be a little bit too much of a coincidence that a documentary crew was also following him. He was also fired for incompetence [in the U.K. Office], so we’d have to create some back story for what happened. There would be some things to deal with. On the flip side, you have someone who’s incredibly talented and who has played with a level of realism that’s the same as our show. It wouldn’t be like we would be taking a character from Cheers, like Norm, and putting him in the show. If Dunder Mifflin needed to replace Michael Scott, they’d consider both internal and external candidates. And we will show them considering both. We’ll kind of start [the replacement process] and put it in motion. I don’t want Steve to go, and if he decides he wants to stay, I will be very happy with that.”
And Gervais himself seems to be against it, but who the eff knows if he’s serious or not when he says:
“As David Brent would say, ‘Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt …’ As I would say, ‘Why would I get up at 6 a.m. five days a week for seven years when I can hire someone else to do that and still get my syndication money?’”
We think they SERIOUSLY need to consider this option if they want to keep the show alive!
That Gervais is denying the rumor doesn’t make it untrue. Regardless, I agree with Hilton that the idea is “brilliant” and “inspired.”
For whatever reason, while I very much enjoy Carell’s other work — and love Dilbert and the “Office Space” movie — I’ve never liked “The Office.” The characters just fall flat for me and the plots seem contrived. But I realize that’s a minority view.
And, in any case, Gervais is an extraordinarily talented fellow and completing the circle in this way would be a classic move.
Debrahlee Lorenzana claims she was fired from Citibank for being too sexy.
A Latina lovely says her bosses at Citigroup canned her for flaunting her ample assets at a midtown bank.
Dangerously curvy Debrahlee Lorenzana contends her ex-bosses at Citibank in the Chrysler Building banned her from wearing sexy outfits or heels deemed “too distracting” for male coworkers.
“I can’t help it that I have curves,” Lorenzana told the Daily News.  “And I’m not going to go eat and gain 50 or 100 pounds because my job wants me to be the same size as everyone else.”
The 33-year-old Queens woman filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court, claiming she was ordered to lay off turtlenecks, pencil skirts and fitted suits because clingy clothes were drawing too much attention in the workplace.
“Debrahlee Lorenzana would be very attractive in a burka,” said her lawyer Jack Tuckner, of Tuckner Sipser Weinstock & Sipser.
Lorenzana, who is 5-feet-6 and 125 pounds, defended her fashion choices, saying she never flashed too much skin and dressed professionally, not provocatively. “Never did I ever show cleavage,” the divorced single mom said. “I like fashion, but I always dressed professionally.”
Lorenzana was hired as a business banking officer at Citi’s Chrysler branch in September 2008 and transferred in July 2009 to a Rockefeller Center branch. The suit claims she was moved to an out-of-the-way spot where she couldn’t lure in new clients as retaliation for her complaints about sexual harassment. A month later she was fired.
“All it came down to was, ‘We don’t want to deal with you, because you’re just too good looking,’” Tuckner said.
In a statement, Citigroup said the suit is “without merit,” but declined to discuss Lorenzana’s performance. “Citi is committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and providing a respectful environment in the workplace,” the statement read.
Lorenzana, who works for another financial institution, said she’s had to face harassment her entire life because of a body that drives men wild. “I get harassed in the supermarket with my son just wearing sweatpants with my hair in a ponytail,” she said. “I can’t help how I look.”
She’s doubtless a very beautiful woman with a nice physique. But methinks something else is going on here: She’s not that hot.  Surely, there are hundreds of similarly attractive women in Manhattan who manage to get through the workday on a regular basis.
The Daily News has helpfully posted a photo gallery titled “Debrahlee Lorenzana: Too sexy to work at Citibank?“Â Here are two samples:
The pics, entirely safe for work (unless, perhaps, you’re at Citibank) do nothing to dissuade me from my view that she’s below the attractiveness threshold that should shut down the operations of a major corporation.
Scotty Lago is leaving the Vancouver Olympics a little early, as the X-Games stars got a little XXX.
American halfpipe bronze medalist Scotty Lago volunteered to leave the Olympics on Friday after risque pictures of him showed up on the Internet.Lago, who was awarded his bronze medal Thursday night, was at a party, wearing a Team USA T-shirt when somebody snapped a photo of a woman kneeling below Lago’s waist to kiss his medal. That picture, and another showing him sticking the medal in the woman’s mouth while teammate Greg Bretz looks on, appeared Friday on the TMZ Web site.
Lago apologized to officials at the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association and decided to go home.
“Scotty Lago is a great athlete, but with that comes a responsibility of proper conduct, and his involvement in this situation is not acceptable,” U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association President and CEO Bill Marolt said in an e-mail. “Scotty realizes his conduct was inappropriate. He has formally apologized and also made a decision to leave Vancouver today.”
In the aftermath of several out-of-competition incidents in Turin, one of which resulted in the dismissal of freestyle skier Jeret Peterson, the USOC has made extra efforts to emphasize athletes be on their best behavior when they’re at the Olympics.
Frankly, the photos are pretty mild. But, sheesh, after the Michael Phelps fiasco, you’d think these guys would learn.
Story: ”Lago leaves after picture hits Web” AP/ESPN. Photo: “Olympian Scotty Lago — To the Victor Goes …” TMZ
I’m not sure who will win the Parent of the Year Award this year, but we can safely rule out Alec Baldwin.
Emmy award-winning actor Alec Baldwin was taken to a hospital Thursday after his 14-year-old daughter called 911 saying he had threatened to take pills during an argument on the telephone, a law enforcement official said.
Baldwin’s daughter, Ireland, told authorities that she was worried about her father after he said, “I’m tired of this. I’m going to take some pills. I’m going to end this,” the official told The Associated Press, quoting from an official report on the matter.
Authorities came to the “30 Rock” star’s Central Park West apartment after his daughter called 911 at about 12:10 a.m. Thursday, the official said. The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Ireland called authorities after the two ended their phone conversation and she couldn’t reach him again, the official said.
Baldwin, 51, was released from the hospital in an hour and took no alcohol or pills, spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said. “This was a misunderstanding on one person’s part. Alec was quickly released from the hospital; he’s completely fine and will be at work today,” Hiltzik said in a statement. “If there was a real problem or concern, he wouldn’t have been released from a hospital within an hour,” Hiltzik said later Thursday.
In 2008, Baldwin blamed a bitter custody battle with ex-wife Kim Basinger in part for the anger and frustration he was feeling when he berated their daughter in a phone message leaked earlier to the media.
In the message, Baldwin called Ireland a “rude, thoughtless little pig.” He was apparently upset that she had missed his phone call. Baldwin said he apologized to Ireland. He said the message was wrong and “horrified” him.
Truly a pathetic way to deal with a child. Baldwin is a fine actor but he’s rather hysterical and famous for idle threats.  Back in 2004, he told a national television office that he’d leave the country if George W. Bush was re-elected; Bush was and Baldwin didn’t.
Source:Â “Alec Baldwin briefly hospitalized after 911 call” – Reuters/YahooNews
A new tell-all book written by a former campaign aide alleges that John Edwards and Reille Hunter captured their illicit romance on video. Gawker’s Ravi Somaiya:
Sources have told us that, in the throes of their affair, John Edwards and Rielle Hunter made a sex tape that contains “several sex acts.” And that his aide, Andrew Young found it on an unmarked DVD.
The tape, say both our sources, is explicit and reveals that Edwards “is physically very striking, in a certain area. Everyone who sees it says ‘whoa’. She’s behind the camera at first.”
When rumors of the affair first broke Young was so loyal to Edwards that he pretended that he was the father of Hunter’s daughter Frances Quinn, now 2. But part of Young’s disillusionment with the 2004 vice presidential candidate and 2008 candidate came one day as he went through a stack of DVDs at Rielle Hunter’s house.
Ravi’s soliciting copies of the tape. I’ll pass, thanks.
Thus far, David Corn has the best line on this:Â “John Edwards’ mission in life: to make Tiger Woods look good.“
In a somewhat unexpected move, Conan O’Brien has told NBC that he will not agree to moving “The Tonight Show” to after midnight to get the network out of the hash they created by moving Jay Leno to prime time.
In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.
But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.
Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.
So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.
There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.
While I’ve got no dog in this fight — I’ve seldom seen O’Brien’s show (old or new), haven’t watched Leno’s new show, and won’t watch “Tonight” regardless of who’s hosting it or when it’s aired — I’ve come around to O’Brien’s way of thinking.
NBC made a bad choice six years ago when it kicked the can down the road and set Leno’s premature retirement into motion. It compounded that error by putting Leno up against the other network’s prime time dramas, not only screwing the network’s affiliates but also seriously hampering O’Brien’s chances to succeed in the franchise he waited so long to inherit. One can certainly understand, then, O’Brien’s not wanting to be relegated back to the midnight slot and screw over Fallon in the process.
One presumes, then, that NBC will figure some way to buy him out of his contract and that O’Brien will do what David Letterman did in a similar situation years ago: Move to another network and compete against “Tonight.” Fox has already issued a statement saying they’d love to have him.
Alex Massie passes along “An unfortunately timed Accenture advertisement in the Wall Street Journal today that has also caught the attention of the folks at TMZ (who dub it “the definition of irony) and, I’m sure, others.
The juxtaposition of this and Woods’ car crash over the weekend is somewhat amusing, although I’m sure the gang at Accenture are laughing all the way to the bank. This ad is pretty similar to a whole series of ads they’ve run featuring Woods going back to 2003 but this is the first one I’m paid any attention to.
On the subject of Woods, Conor Friedersdorf argues that, not only do athletes deserve to be treated as private individuals outside their sporting lives but, more importantly, sports fans would be much better served were that the case.
Every aficionado knows that sports are worth playing and watching as a simulacrum of life. Contriving various games with sets of rules, and leagues of competitors, we’re meant to enjoy the beauty of athletic prowess, to be awed by bodies that can do things ours can’t, to experience the suspense of live competition, the thrills of victory, and the lows of defeat—and to learn from the spectacle, all without the consequences of actual battle.
The effect is ruined when real life intrudes, even if only in the mind of the viewer, just as a movie is diminished when an actor’s real-life personality is as much a presence as the character he is playing, or a play suffers when a stagehand is heard sneezing behind the scenery during a climactic scene.
[...]
What I’d like is to hold athlete-entertainers to account as role models so long as they’re on the job. Should Tiger Woods back his golf cart into a lake during a celebrity skins tournament, by all means let’s investigate the story, lament the fall of another athlete who “seemed different than the others,” and recalibrate our opinion of the sportsman. The same goes for folks who dope in private to enhance their public performances. Realty demands that Mark McGwire is a fallen hero; his sins bear directly on his supposed heroics.
[...]
Except in the most extreme circumstances, athletes shouldn’t be treated as public figures when they are off the court, the field, or the course. It diminishes what they add to society, irrationally elevating their private lives in ways that do a disservice to them and to us.
That’s exactly right, I think.
That won’t keep us from writing about the Woods mini-scandal or others involving athletes. People are interested in these matters. Heck, I’m interested in them. But we would undoubtedly be better off knowing less about our icons than we do.
Someone with a lot of time on his hands has compiled a 10 minute video purporting to be “A selection of the top 100 quotes from The Wire, the greatest TV show ever made.”
Not surprisingly, virtually all of them contain NSFW language, with the F- and N-words being especially well represented.
The weekend’s most bizarre story is that British cancer specialist Dr. Brooke Magnanti has revealed that she is “Belle de Jour,” the pseudonymous blogger who managed to get several bestselling books and a television movie out of having paid her way through graduate school as a high priced prostitute. Jon Ungoed-Thomas for The Times.
Her identity has been one of the great literary mysteries of the decade after the publication of bestselling books about her secret life as a prostitute.
Magnanti is a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol. Six years ago, in the final stages of her PhD thesis, she ran out of money and turned to prostitution through a London escort agency, charging £300 an hour. Already an experienced science blogger, she began writing about her experiences in a web diary that was adapted into books and a television drama starring Billie Piper.
[...]
The scientist, a petite 34-year-old, has no regrets about her 14 months as a prostitute. “I’ve felt worse about my writing than I ever have about sex for money,†she said. Anonymity had become “no funâ€, however: “I couldn’t even go to my own book launch party.â€
Until last week, not even her agent knew her real name. A month ago she revealed her secret to her colleagues at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, who were “amazingly kind and supportiveâ€. She was preparing to tell her parents this weekend.
Magnanti said she was working on a doctoral study for the department of forensic pathology of Sheffield University in 2003 when she took up prostitution. “I was getting ready to submit my thesis. I saved up a bit of money. I thought, I’ll just move to London, because that’s where the jobs are, and I’ll see what happens.
“I couldn’t find a professional job in my chosen field because I didn’t have my PhD yet. I didn’t have a lot of spare time on my hands because I was still making corrections and preparing for the viva; and I got through my savings a lot faster than I thought I would.â€
When she could no longer afford her rent, she started to think: “What can I do that I can start doing straightaway, that doesn’t require a great deal of training or investment to get started, that’s cash in hand and that leaves me spare time to do my work in?â€
Apparently, threats that an ex-boyfriend (whether of the paid or unpaid variety is unclear) would reveal her secret forced her hand.
She claims to have earned £300 a night, which I find baffling on a number of levels. And says that her blog “will continue for a bit – I’d like her to have a happy ending.” Which is an amusing double entendre, whether intentional or otherwise.
Her “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” blog was controversial, since it depicted prostitution as glamorous. Since the blogger was pseudonymous,many speculated that it was a work of fiction, with some claiming the author was a man. Presuming Magnanti’s claim to authorship is genuine, it’ll be interesting to see what the reactions are.
