50 shades parody in Private Eye this week. Genius... They don't do online, but I type my favourite bit.
"When I wake, Mr Grey is at the piano, completeLy lost in the melody he is playing. His expression is sad and forlorn, like the music. His playing is stunning. He is able to use both hands at once.
'That was a beautiful piece,' I say. 'Bach?'
'Chopin. Prelude Opus twenty-eight, number four. In E minor, if you're interested,' he murmurs. 'Perhaps best known for his nocturnes, Frederic Chopin is considered on e of the great masters of Romantic music...'
When I wake, Mr Grey is still at the piano.
'born in the village of Zelazowa Wola, in the Duchy of Warsaw, the young Frederic was soon to become a renowned child prodigy..' he continues. It all spurts out of him like a waterfall. He tweaks the stem of his champagne flute with his expert hand and looks at it through his narrowed eyes. 'Bollinger Grande annee Rose 1999, an excellent vintage,' he sighs.
How long can he keep going like this? No man before has ever bored me so stiff, so solid, his every shaft of verbiage thudding into me like a truncheon.
Earlier, the Eye also nails the product placement.
'I gaze into his $75,000 Bulgari mirror bought from Macy's exclusive department store in Manhattan, New York'.
Cruelly catches how naive it actually sounds... and how wrong about the US. Macy's is of course the home of the middle classes... kind of a US John Lewis.
Don't get me wrong, but the book is itself so snobby, so very far from unassuming in its claims, that I think it deserves some pummeling on these grounds. On the plus side, perhaps now James will be able to visit those designer stores to which she seems something of a stranger.