Belle de Jour can rest easy: her mum doesn’t mind that she worked as a call girl whose online diary became a literary phenomenon.

Dr Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist working in Bristol, unmasked herself yesterday as the anonymous author behind the best-kept secret in modern literature.

The cancer epidemiologist and developmental neurotoxicologist has unfurled her riddle in stages. One month ago she informed colleagues at the University of Bristol, a week ago she let her literary agent know, and yesterday she told The Sunday Times, but she had saved the hardest until last: she had to break it her mother.

Dr Magnanti released a statement today to say the job was done. “My mother is being fully supportive and says she’s ’not one to judge’,” she said. “I, for one, am happy and relieved.”

The verdict from her mother, who lives in the United States, came after her employers said they had no problem with her sexual history.

“This aspect of Dr Magnanti’s past is not relevant to her current role at the university,” said a spokesman for the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health.

“Anything else might be of interest to people but it’s not relevant to what she’s doing.”

Six years ago, while she completed the final stages of her PhD, she ran out of money and turned to prostitution charging £300 an hour. She used her experience as a science blogger to let the world know what she was up to - but not, until now, who she was.

Her experiences were documented in a blog that was later adapted into books and a television drama starring Billie Piper.

Dr Magnanti, 34, said she decided to reveal her secret because it was making her paranoid, and she feared that an ex-boyfriend might reveal Belle’s true identity.

She works as part of a team researching the potential effects on babies of their mothers’ exposure to toxic chemicals, and said her colleagues - all female - had been “amazingly kind and supportive” when she revealed her past.

The scientist, who studied anthropology and maths in Florida, was writing a thesis at Sheffield University’s department of forensic pathology when she became a call girl.

She moved to London to find work while completing the course and preparing for her viva voce, the oral examination on her research.

She spent her savings quicker than expected and found that working as a call girl allowed her to make money and have enough spare time to complete her work.

Dr Magnanti said her decision to go public was also prompted by comments last month by Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York.

He said the “fiction” of stories like Belle de Jour’s created a “myth” that sex workers were independent women, empowered by the hold they had over men, who treated it like any other job.

Dr Magnanti said she was annoyed by the accusation that her stories were fiction: “You can’t say I’m not real, and that my experience isn’t real, because here I am.”

She admitted some sex workers have “terrible experiences” but said she was “unbelievably fortunate”.

An entry on the Belle de Jour blog website today asked the media to refrain from contacting her at work. She also took the opportunity to clarify her relationship with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs department.

“So much curiosity about my tax situation!” she wrote. “Yes, I did pay taxes on sex work earnings.”

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