Last weekend, the once-anonymous writer behind the Secret Diary Of A Call Girl books revealed her real identity. Now everyone in the world knows 34-year-old neurotoxicologist Dr. Brooke Magnanti penned the insanely popular blog, Diary Of A London Call Girl, under the nom de plume “Belle du Jour.” (Which, of course, turned into a Showtime TV show starring Billie Piper.) As is to be expected, newspapers tracked down Magnanti’s dad, Paul, and he professed shock at the news that his daughter slept with people for cash while earning her Ph.D.

But then Brooke Magnanti’s dad dropped a somewhat awkward bomb in the middle of this call girl tale: He and his daughter have been estranged for years because she was upset that he’d slept with over 150 prostitutes, some of whom were drug addicted.

For years, only six people knew the true identity of Belle, an anonymous call girl who wrote about her adventures in sex work at the blog Diary of a London Call Girl. While her blog became an international hit, she published several books, and Showtime picked up a TV series based on the book called “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” only half a dozen people in the world knew the real Belle! Many assumed the nom de plume concealed a raunchy male identity; one popular theory was that Toby Young, the former Vanity Fair journalist and author of How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, penned the blog and books.

But this weekend, Belle finally outed herself—yes, herself. “There is ... an ex-boyfriend with a big mouth lurking in the background,” the Times of London reported and “outing herself while she still has a measure of control over how it happens seems the sensible option.”

Drumroll, please ...

It’s been raining cats and dogs here in New York City for the last 24 hours, but hopefully it’ll clear up tonight for game one of the World Series between the Yankees and the Phillies. My die-hard Yankees fan of a husband would probably give his left ... well, let’s just say he’d be really excited to go to a game, but he’s not as desperate—or as stupid, it seems—as one female Phillies fan who was arrested last night for her efforts to score tickets. Susan Finkelstein, 43, was charged with prostitution after she placed an ad on Craigslist offering sex in exchange for World Series tickets. She described herself as “gorgeous” and said: “I’m the creative type! Maybe we can help each other.” She was busted when an undercover cop responded to her ad and she allegedly offered to perform sex acts in exchange for some coveted tickets to the series. I’m going to suggest that from now on we refer to all sex-for-tickets transactions as “Finkelsteining,” in honor of our fallen Phillies fan. “How did you score those tickets?” “Oh, I Finkelsteined them.” Catchy, right? [via Fox News]

Meet Mare Simone. She’s a 54-year-old woman who’s had sex with over 1,500 men for money but says she’s not a prostitute. She’s what’s called a sexual therapist, a profession that involves talk therapy and sometimes, though much more rarely, actual sexual contact with clients who have a variety of sexual dysfunctions. Here in the States, it’s considered unethical for sex therapists to have sex with their clients, and in some states it’s even illegal. The laws in England, where Simone practices, are a little fuzzier, but she insists there is nothing illegal about her practice. She says: “I earn my living by sleeping with other women’s husbands or boyfriends. But I am in no way a prostitute as sex surrogacy is legal, as long as it is done in a therapeutic and healing atmosphere.”

If you’re anything like me, the life of a high-class prostitute has intrigued you since Secret Diary Of A Call Girl. But note I said high-class prostitute: this career choice only piques my interest insofar as I could earn the big money. Lucky for me, the authors of Freakonomics figured this out.  Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have written a new book, Superfreakonomics, in which they explain the paradox of how high-class prostitutes make a crap load of money by not working very long hours.

Back in the early 1900s, boxer Jack Johnson was charged with violating the Mann Act, which forbid “transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes.” This act was intended to put an end to prostitution and an amended version is actually still in place. In 1913, Jackson was the first to be prosecuted under the act, and he was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to a year and a day in prison. After fleeing the country and living abroad for seven years, Johnson returned to the United States and served his sentence.

Here’s a skeevy trend for you. In Hong Kong, teenage girls are going on “compensated dates” after school. Basically, they go out with older men in exchange for money, but they don’t see this as prostitution, because in their minds they’re in control of whether or not sex is involved ... even though sex is usually involved. These girls are using the money to buy fancy-schmancy designer goods, which are increasingly a big deal in Asia. Total side note: When I studied in Tokyo, my Japanese friend told me that she wanted the brands that Americans like Britney Spears wore. When I tried to explain that teenage girls can’t often afford the same things as celebrities, she looked legitimately confused.

In honor of national Seniors Week in Melbourne, Australia, grandpas and grandmas will receive lots of great perks and discounts to celebrate their vivacity, wisdom, and ... sex lives. Screw the early bird special, salacious seniors Down Under can show their card and receive discounts on, err, sexual services. From October 4 to 11 some local brothels aligned with Australian Adult Entertainment will offer markdowns of up to 50 percent on services for seniors. What a deal! AAEI spokesman William Albon says, “Many senior members of the community already use our member’s services, whether visiting a brothel or having an escort visit their place of residence, including aged care residential centers.” A prostitute in a nursing home? Not a visual I’m totally comfortable with but, yes, in case you were wondering, old people need action, too. [Moorabin Glen Eira Leader]

I worked at a coffee shop in college. Sometimes I would throw in a free cookie to go along with a cup o’ joe for my favorite customers and they would return the favor by tipping extra. But apparently I missed out on a much bigger opportunity! At a coffee shop in Everett, Washington, the baristas were frothing more than just milk—police have arrested five female workers for operating a prostitution ring out of the cafe. They would charge customers as much as $80 to flash their breasts, lick whipped cream off each other’s body parts, and pose for nudie pics. Also!

Detectives say the women also charged customers to play “basketball”—a game in which customers were allowed to throw waded up money at the women, who caught the money in their underpants. [Everett Daily Herald]

OK, so I get that this is wrong and all, but it’s not like they were offering sex or blow jobs with the lattes, right? Next time steal from the register, ladies! [via Gawker]

Talk about a double life! British female police officer Victoria Thorne, 29, is on her way to jail for the next 15 months for moonlighting as a call girl at an escort agency called “Notorious Girls.” The corrupt cop had been working as a prostitute since 2006 and made about $150 per hour, servicing about 20 dudes a week. Sometimes she brought her extracurricular work home with her, although she usually did the deed at hotels. She made a special effort not to meet with Johns in the district where she works and swears she never wore her uniform in any of the proceedings. But Thorne did use police computers to score info about rival brothels for “Notorious Girls” owner Neil Lock. With her help, Neil was able to expand his business quite a bit. That is until someone saw her sexy pics on the “Notorious Girls” website, under the name Kelly, and started investigating her. Eight other women were arrested in the year-long sting aimed at outing prostitutes and corrupt officials.

So while we believe she never wore her uniform as a working girl, we wonder if she ever handcuffed her clients? [Daily Mail]

We raised an eyebrow when Susan Sarandon and her daughter took a pole dancing class together. We shook our heads when Demi Moore took daughter Rumer to a strip club. But we are completely and totally scandalized by Traci Young, 39, and her daughter Tami Smith, 22, who used their mother-daughter bond as a gimmick to reel in johns in Philadelphia. The two posted ads on Craigslist, under the now-discontinued erotic services section, with the subject line, “Mother and Daughter Tag Team.” An undercover police officer responded to the ad and met the two women at their house, where they decided on the price of $200 smackeroos to have a threesome. Then he slapped handcuffs on them. The pair went on trial this week, and were just found guilty of prostitution. “It’s a messed up world out there and we have to do this just to get by,” Young told reporters. Yeah, I’d say so. [CBS 3]

Supposedly, disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is considering another run for public office, and the mother of the call girl at the center of the scandal that brought down the “Love Gov” is speaking out. In an interview with the New York Post, Ashley Dupre‘s mother, Carolyn Capalbo, opined of Spitzer’s slow-but-steady career resurrection: “Only in America.” Dupre, in contrast, is “having a rough go”; surely, coming back from being outed as a sex worker who brought down a politician is no easy feat. A friend of Dupre pointed out that in this case the woman gets the short end of the stick: “The woman always ends up the filthy, marked whore and he ends up coming back the savior of politics.” Dupre may have gotten paid, but it seems she’s the one paying now. [New York Post]

When hookers in Brazil want to protest discrimination, they take to the seams. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, prostitutes in Rio de Janeiro walked the runway as models for Gabriela Leite’s Daspu label (“daspu” comes from the slang term “das putas” or “the whores”). The former prostitute started the label four years ago “as a way for prostitutes to gain regular income while also fighting preconceptions of people affected with AIDS.”

“Daspu gets rid of prejudice,” says Leite. “It opens paths for the citizen whore.”

About 50 cities in the U.S. have come up with an interesting way to handle dudes who are caught trying to pick up prostitutes—they’re sending them to “John Schools.” In these AA-like meetings, the guys listen to presentations by former prostitutes who tell them how brutal the industry is, health experts who share how dangerous sex-for-hire can be, and therapists who try to get them to understand why they were trying to buy nookie in the first place. The idea is to get the guys—about half of whom are married—to understand that hiring a prostitute isn’t a fun and harmless thing, but that they’re actually part of a much bigger problem. Only first-time offenders are eligible for these AA-like meetings, which are generally held in churches or government buildings. (Repeat offenders and those who try to solicit minors are dealt with more harshly.) The guys also have to pay a $250 fee and finish the class without trying to buy another woman.

Remember that Oscar winner who allegedly used Craigslist to lure women to his place so he could rape them? Or the Craigslist Killer? Or that man who advertised on Craigslist for someone to rape his wife? After all these horrendous incidents, Craigslist felt pressured to get rid of their “Erotic Services” section and replace it with a less blatantly prostitutiony “Adult Services” section. What’s happened since?

I grew up drooling to “Cops,” so my classiness expectations for TLC’s new Thursday night show, “Police Women Of Broward County,” were low. But, actually, “Police Women” is way less trashy than you’d expect. The lady cops bust heads and take names, and they deliver monologues about single motherhood and how hard it is to balance their jobs and their families.

But one of Broward County’s prostitution-busting moves rubbed me the wrong way.

When you think of environmental consciousness, your probably flashes to organic-food eating, composting, solar-energy-loving people. Not whore houses. But a Berlin brothel owner is hoping to make an impact by offering a $7 discount (off the $100 for a 45-minute session) for patrons that arrive on bicycles. Since 2002, Germany has given legit labor contracts to about 400,000 women prostitutes, but business isn’t going so well. Thomas Goetz, the owner of “Maison d’envie” (haha…House of Envy), says, “The recession has hit our industry hard, obviously we hope that the discount will attract more people. It’s good for business, it’s good for the environment and it’s good for the girls. We have around 3-5 new customers coming in daily to take advantage of the discount.” [Reuters]

Michael Jackson’s past was checkered, but as Movieline.com pointed out, his death created an even more public spectacle: people prostituting themselves on Craigslist for MJ memorial service tickets. Talk about “Dangerous!” Man, everyone is trying to get their piece in the King of Pop’s passing. And boy were they perverted about wanting someone to just beat it for them.

It’s taken me a long time to grow my hair out even to my shoulders after a styling mishap a couple years ago forced me to cut it all off, but offer me, say, 100K to cut it short again and I’d do it in a heartbeat. Hell, I’d cut it for 10K. Five thousand I’m not so sure about, though. My point is, we’ve all got a price for pretty much everything, and for me it’s 10 (maybe five) thousand bucks for my hair. For a woman in Oklahoma, her asking price is a little more modest. For a few potato chips, she’ll give up her whole body. Lahoma Sue Smith, 35, pleaded no contest to trading sex with a Frito-Lay employee for a $30 box of chips. Officers found them both partially clothed, inside Smith’s car. The guy wasn’t charged, but Smith was fined $1,142. Dude, that’s a lot of chips. [My Fox Boston]

• Despite her life-threatening struggle with anal cancer, Farrah Fawcett has agreed to marry longtime love Ryan O’Neal. O’Neal says that during her brave battle with cancer, he has only fallen more deeply in love with Fawcett. [Pop Eater] – Aww.
• Kate and Jon Gosselin have filed divorce papers in a Bucks County Courthouse in Reading, PA. [People]—We guessed wrong!
• Chris Brown has plea bargained his way out of jail time. He entered a plea of guilty today and was given five years probation 180 days of community labor. [PopEater]—So was justice served?