The 34-year-old, who now lives in Bristol and works as a cancer researcher, went on the game to fund herself through university.

Selling her body was, she said, "so much more enjoyable" than her other job as a computer programmer.

And after admitting she was indeed Belle du Jour, she sought to justify herself by crediting her Jewish background for leading her to become a high-priced call girl.

"Oy vey," Yiddish for "Oh woe is me", is what you'd expect her mother to say when she found out how her daughter had cleared her student debts and funded her Phd. But no.

"I'm proud of her," declared Susan Levy, from her New York home. She only found out last weekend that her daughter had been a £300 an hour hooker whose exploits, told on internet blogs, became a best-selling book The Intimate Adventures of A London Call Girl.

Her father Paul, after divorcing her mother in 1991, went on to have a pathological addiction to prostitutes, sleeping with more than 150.

Incredulously, he introduced his daughter to some of them when she was in her 20s.

Perhaps this had such an impact on her psyche that, rather than alienating her from her dad, she reckoned his sexual prediliction quite OK and so in later life turned to prostitution.

It's estimated she made well over £100,000 from being a whore. And she would have received hundreds of thousands of pounds from a book and television deal, starring Billie Piper as Belle in the TV series.

So now set up financially, her past exploits an irrelevancy to her current employer in Bristol, where does that leave Dr Magnanti?

She may have a healthy bank balance but morally she's bankrupt and not a nice example for any girl, Jewish or gentile.

At the other end of the scale, there are mere children being trafficked into the dangerous underworld, selling their bodies for a tenner's worth of smack.

And out to break the cycle, Barnardos workers go into the red light districts in a bid to save young prostitutes.

Barnardo's rescued Imogen, who at 13, was trafficked into prostituion after being taken into care at 12.

Now 19, she told me: "The girls in the home were all a bit older than me and were going out with older men, at first I just tagged along,"

She soon became dependent on her new friends. The group would regularly go "missing" – running away to the boyfriends' flats and houses. To a 12-year-old it all seemed very exciting.

"They gave me drink and smokes – it was a laugh. Then one man started to take a special interest in me. He was much older, he was protective – I felt looked after, wanted, loved even.

"He gave me everything I wanted and when I was 13 he handed over the keys to a flat and said 'It's yours, use it when you need it'".

For a youngster with no family support it seemed like a dream come true, but before long it was payback time.

Imogen suspected that her "boyfriend" was involved with other girls, but one night he asked her to "dress up", they were going to a party.
Imogen was taken to London.

She was told to have sex with different "friends". It was a pattern that would soon become all too familiar.

"I didn't have any choice, I felt so guilty. Eventually he'd take me all over the country: Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, London.

"He'd take me to hotels, some nights two or three. I never saw any money change hands. Some men asked 'How old is she?' – some asked 'Have you got any younger?' They were really sick."

Her "boyfriend" was organised and delivering young girls around the country was just business, and he was well practiced in this lucrative business…

"I wanted to escape, but he just controlled me – it was a mental thing, I was terrified," she confesses.

But Imogen's luck changed when the man was arrested and it gave her the opportunity to escape and make contact with Barnardo's.

And she changed her life around.

For help contact Barnardo's Sexual Exploitation Of Children On The Streets (SECOS) at Middlesbrough 01642 819743; Wearside Women In Need's 24 hr helpline 0800 066 55 55.