50 Shades knocked off its perch

50 Shades knocked off its perch

Bryony Gordon London

Well, it had to happen sometime. After 16 weeks lording it at the top of the Amazon charts, writhing and thrashing around above the heads of Victoria Hislop and Hilary Mantel and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - not to mention Dr Dukan — the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has finally been knocked off its perch. Or its sex swing, as its author E L James might say. In both the print and Kindle charts, James’s bonkbuster bondage books have at last been forced to relinquish the top spot. On Tuesday afternoon, the authors, Si King and Dave Myers, raced to the pinnacle of the UK book charts with The Hairy Dieters, in which they describe how they lost six stone between them through “tasty recipes that are low in calories and big in flavour”. Hmm, raunchy! “We’ve always known our food is sexy, but this is mad,” said the Hairy Bikers in response to the news that they had moved the mighty Fifty Shades from the top spot. Over in Amazon’s digital book chart, a gentle love story about dog-walking has sent Fifty Shades Freed hurtling to the number two spot in the bestsellers list. Monday To Friday Man overtook E L James’s “mummy porn” 10 days ago and has stayed at the top ever since. “I couldn’t believe it when I found out. It feels almost dreamy. I mean [on the scale of things], my book is really PG. It’s incredibly PG. There aren’t any sex scenes in Monday to Friday Man. I’d just find it excrutiating to write one,” says author Alice Peterson. Is there a kiss, any hand-holding, I ask? “There is a look,” laughs Peterson. “A knowing look. But it wouldn’t be me to write raunch.” “It (the book) is based on the dog-walking group in my local park,” admits Peterson, who has a Lucas Terrier called Mr Darcy. “They all think it’s funny that it has overtaken Fifty Shades.” Thirty-eight-year-old Peterson lives just down the road from E L James and says she has read Fifty Shades. She finds it funny that her sweet romance story should have triumphed over a book about sado-masochistic sex. We all know that sex sells. But could it be that Fifty Shades has managed to actually make it all look a little… well, boring? When people are happily reading about whips and nipple clamps on the bus, one has to ask where the excitement has gone. Where are the furtive glances to check nobody has caught what you’re reading, the titillation that comes from picking up something you really shouldn’t be? Indeed, this whole Fifty Shades saga is perhaps best summed up by the action of an independent bookseller who, on a visit to a bookshop, put a sign in front of some copies of E L James’s trilogy that he found on sale there: “This is an awful book. Do not read this book. There is better smut on the internet. Smut that is well written. Smut that doesn’t romanticise abusive relationships. And it’s free.” The Daily Telegraph