From fiction to fact

Columnist and Senior Features Writer

Sunday 8 July 2012

IT has been credited with spicing up dull sex lives and reviving ailing marriages.

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Susan Swarbrick

And now, boffins are predicting a Fifty Shades Of Grey baby boom.

Such is the popularity of the bestselling erotic trilogy, dubbed "mummy porn", that printers are having to work around the clock to keep up with demand – and it seems the nation's midwives may soon be doing likewise.

Professor Ellis Cashmore, expert in culture at Staffordshire University, has said we could see a rise in the number of newborns in Britain next year. "With the millions of copies it has sold – it makes complete sense to assume that in nine months' time we are going see a baby boom," he said. Forget Fifty Shades Of Grey, that is a revelation which makes me go about 100 hues of green. For those unfamiliar with the story – have you been on Mars? – it charts a classic boy-meets-girl romance, with virginal college student Anastasia Steele falling for the charms of billionaire playboy, Christian Grey.Except the twist in the tale, which apparently has everyone salivating, is that the dashing Christian insists Ana signs a contract agreeing to submit to his every S&M and bondage whim in his "Red Room of Pain". I don't know about you, but not since Twilight's Bella Swan and Edward Cullen has there been a less aspirational couple (in that sorry scenario the leading man stalks, manipulates and regularly fantasises about killing her – how romantic).Yet Fifty Shades Of Grey is a phenomenon which almost every woman in the country is talking about, reading and – it would seem – emulating. Which means the nation's schools could soon be bursting with little Anas and Christians. Not to mention the soaring DIY bills as copious red rooms of pain are hastily re-decorated in nursery-appropriate pastel shades.

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From fiction to fact

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