Fifty Shades of Grey: The Greatest Reading Ever
Watch the single greatest reading of E L James' mega-selling erotica.
A few years ago it was teenage wizards. Then it was vampire romance. And now, it is upper middle class pornography. Except you can't really call it that, because ever so much more high-brow and less degrading than the material that has driven the adult entertainment industry for decades. It's not like it would be acceptable social practice for people to be reading Playboy or Playgirl in public, but anyway... You can't move these days for women with their noses buried in their copies of E.L.James' erotically-charged Fifty Shades of Grey (I personally saw three on the same bus this afternoon), and the book, which started life as a Twilight fan fiction with added BDSM, has become something of a micro-culture all of its own. And as with all cultural phenomena, it had inspired a response culture of spoofs, parodies and open mockery, as critics and comedians alike unite to tackle a target made all the more easy because of its mass appeal. And don't take that as a cynical sneer at that sort of response - I'm a major fan in fact, which is precisely why the video below touched me in a far more special way than Christian Grey ever could (not sure I'm his type, to be honest). The video in question has been around for a little while now, but that doesn't mean it isn't as much of a joy as it was first time round. It comes from Jest.com, and features quite frankly the greatest voice in the industry - of a man who breathed life into Iago the Parrot and whose comedy has been an often controversial highlight of the American circuit for a good few years. Needless to say, it's not exactly safe for work, or young ears. But it is bloody funny... http://youtu.be/5K1RcKJVbHA Just wonderful. I can safely say I am absolutely not interested in the impending screen adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, since it will probably be a mixture of late night, soft-focus soft-core porn and Twilight. But if Gottfried is interested in seriously releasing some audiobooks of this middle-class raunch, I am well up for buying it.