MY working week began with a flat white and some of the Chocolate Orange I liberated from the kids' Christmas stockings after Santa had been but before they'd woken up. Plus ça change.

But nothing could have prepared me for how it would end: with me up to my neck in the work of Chuck Tingle, a pseudonymous author of cult gay erotica whose e-books have titles such as Taken By The Gay Unicorn Biker, Professor T-Rex Teaches Me Gayness, Chuck's Unicorn Tinglers and Glazed By The Gay Living Donuts [sic].

So what chain of events led me to this place? Well, it starts with an intelligence dossier containing lurid but unsubstantiated claims about Donald Trump's sexual proclivities and claiming that evidence of them thought to be in the hands of the Russians may be used to blackmail the President-elect. This report then finds its way to internet company Buzzfeed, who post it online. A copy has previously reportedly crossed Barack Obama's desk and also allegedly been shown to Trump himself, which is justification enough for CNN (and then everyone else) to divulge the report's contents, even though they're unverifiable. So before you can say, “What is a golden shower and how come we've only got a faux chrome one with a wonky nozzle?”, the Twittersphere is in meltdown and #watersportsgate is trending like nothing has ever trended before. And now I'm deep in the world of Chuck Tingle, a world in which men have sex with dinosaurs, mythical animals and, in one story, a train.

Specifically I'm investigating Tingle's latest, a hastily-written 4000-word opus featuring a “millionaire real estate tycoon” called Domald Tromp, a second protagonist who happens to be a “handsome Russian T-Rex”, a video of certain activities that occur in Russia and, not unrelated, a spot of blackmail. It's yours in e-book form for £2.27. See how fast art imitates current events?

Of course there's just the outside chance that this is all some sort of parodic tomfoolery penned by an anonymous wag somewhere – or, as one Twitter user put it, by the “Banksy of self-published dinosaur erotica”. After all, other “Tingler” titles include Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving the European Union, and the no-less-wordy Slammed In The Butt By Domald Tromp's Attempt To Avoid Accusations Of Plagiarism By Removing All Facts Or Concrete Plans From His Republican National Convention Speech. Even more conclusive is the fact that Tingle's Twitter account only follows one person: Katy Perry. That's got to be a joke, right?

Anyway, it has taken my mind off politics this week, which is probably a good thing.

Five words I hate seeing loom up at me from a newspaper story are “according to a new survey”. So it's with a deep sense of shame that I tell you Scots generally and Glaswegians in particular are more likely than anyone else in the UK to watch a movie in their pants – according to a new survey.

Nearly 8 per cent of Scots and almost 10 per cent of respondents in the G postcode area confessed to having taken part in this insalubrious activity, which is almost Trumpian in its depravity (though less damaging to the upholstery).

This same survey, conducted by Censuswide for the Sony Movie Channel, also showed that Glaswegians are the UK's biggest movie snackers, that Britons watch an average of 104 films a year and that one in five men prefers to watch a movie alone. Whether these are the same ones who are also watching in their pants and who ticked the box titled “Other” when asked their genre preferences, is unclear.

Poor old Joe Fiennes. First he gets christened Joseph Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes. Then he learns he's distantly related to a guy who talks to plants and thinks homeopathy works –Prince Charles, an eighth cousin – and now he's getting such a kicking for the sin of being cast as Michael Jackson in an episode of upcoming TV comedy Urban Myths that makers Sky have had to pull it.

Amid howls of “whitewashing” (and even of “peak whitewashing”, whatever that means), anyone who wasn't already occupied by #watersportsgate or watching films in their pants took to Twitter to rant and rage at the prospect of a white actor playing a black musical icon, albeit in a fantastical, 20-minute comedy.

The singer himself once told Oprah Winfrey that the prospect of a white actor playing him on screen was “horrifying”. Chief among those fighting his corner last week was his 18-year-old daughter Paris-Michael. “I'm so incredibly offended by it,” she wrote. “[I]t honestly makes me want to vomit.”

Concerned at the bad press and not wanting to see the contents of anyone's stomach, Sky said on Friday it was pulling the episode “in light of the concerns expressed by Michael Jackson's immediate family. We set out to take a light-hearted look at reportedly true events and never intended to cause any offence. Joseph Fiennes fully supports our decision”.

The anthology series starts on Thursday on Sky Arts and dramatises bizarre and often mythical episodes from the lives of pop culture icons. The episode featuring Fiennes as Jackson would have told the story of a mythical road trip he is supposed to have made after 9/11 as he tried to get out of New York with a couple of close friends, they being Marlon Brando (played by Scottish actor Brian Cox) and Elizabeth Taylor (Stockard Channing).

Other episodes feature urban myths detailing, among other things, why Bob Dylan once dropped into a house in London 's East End for a cup of tea, and how it was enthusiastic LSD user Cary Grant who first told psychologist Timothy Leary about the drug.

Sadly the years Velvet Underground singer Nico is supposed to have spent living in a flat in Edinburgh's Stockbridge area seem to have flown under the programme-makers' radar, which is a shame. Perhaps if they rush-produced an episode featuring Beyonce as the smoky-voiced Teutonic ice queen it would even things up a bit and all would be forgiven. Still, at least they resisted the temptation to cast Danny Dyer in the episode featuring Muhammad Ali – the role of the boxing legend went to Noel Clarke instead.

Chris Grayling is an avant-garde comedian who has gone “deep cover” to undertake a complex and ongoing Situationist prank whereby he impersonates a politician, most recently a Secretary of State for Transport. No really, it's true. I read it on Buzzfeed.

Amazingly he still hasn't been rumbled, though he's starting to sail a little close to the wind. First he became involved in a row over whether B&B owners should have the right to turn away gay couples – there has to be a Chuck Tingle story in there somewhere – and now he's taking aim at cyclists. Not literally of course (though he did knock one off his bike recently by opening his car door into him) but by appearing to question whether they count as road users. “If he truly thinks the roads are not for cyclists then what am I paying my taxes for?” asked gold medal-winning Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman, now a policy advisor to British Cycling.

Mind you, Grayling has a point of sorts. Most cyclists I know ride on the pavement.