BARE NELL

Mum killed by a German bomb, sent to a forbidding boarding school, poor as suet and with a body that thrives on attention--what's a poor Devon girl to do but polish up that heart of gold and take to fiduciary friskery? ""i knew that one day i could become perhaps a famous writer or a famous whore. It was my spelling let me down."" Nell Luscombe, in all fairness, gives the straight and narrow a short shot--chambermaid, waitress, wife--but the freelance life beckons again and again. With women, with sailors, with members of Parliament, Nell finds that her heels may be round but she always lands on her feet. And no customer gets more of his money's worth out of poor Nell than author Thomas; he never gives her a bloomin' rest. Too dirty to be called ribald, too tame to be really dirty, i.e. a British sex comedy: infantile but energetic.