Speccie 2838 Fifty-Something
 

The nice lady at my bookshop says this is the worst book ever written. Worse than Dan Brown and Denis Wheatley? Cripes. I've just read two pages on the Internet. It's appalling.

No. 2838: Fifty-something
You are invited to submit a short story entitled Fifty Shades of whatever you choose] (150 words maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 5 March.

As a prose man, I like these almost 'freestyle' short story comps. Inspiration hasn't struck yet, though I certainly won't be aiming to mimic the style of the original Fifty Shades.

Has anyone here read it? I haven't, although to my shame I have read both Wheatley and Brown. Shocking stuff.

Mind you, what about Fifty Shades of (Dan) Brown?

Do I admit this? I skipped through a library copy, because I was thinking of using it for a comp (El James for the Under-Fives) but I soon lost the will to live. The writing is abysmal, the plot practically non-existent: Man wants S & M sex with girl. Girl says 'yes'. They do it. She doesn't like it. End of story. It's unbelievably bad.

Funny how some things take off isn't it? Soft-porn novels are ten a penny after all. My local Waterstones had a whole bay of this kind of stuff even before the success of Fifty Shades, but no-one else seems to be raking it in like Ms. James does.

The er, source text is in almost every way a mystery to me. I read some of chapter 8 online & it was as arousing as Nigel Farage in a onesie. Which is a shame, as S & M can be a spicy topic. If I should want porn I feel I could write it better myself. But the title is only a prompt, we just do 50 shades of whatever any way we please.

High difficulty level, though. We are condemned to be free. Tough comp.

And there I had always thought, until similar research to Bazza's, it must be American and called 50 Shades Of Gray, giving scope for 150 words on multiple appearances by the haunter of country churchyards. Swiz!

Fifty Shades of Lady Grey
 

Percy Wintergreen, the Head Taster, pursed his lips. “Tinted tea? Fifty shades of Lady Grey?? I think not.”

“Nonsense!”, said Rufus Redwood, Global Outreach Manager. “It’s the way the market’s going. One product, lots of shades, sales increase exponentially.”

Wintergreen frowned. “And what do you propose using to achieve these, er, effects? The stuff’s full of organic extras as it is.”

Redwood laughed in his irritatingly superior Leicester Uni manner. “Oh, there are well over fifty EU-approved harmless chemical additives we can bury in the small print. Meanwhile, the packets continue to major on . . .”

He was interrupted by Malcolm Mordent, a stooped scholarly-looking representative from Ethics and Brand Integrity.

“You realise that the eponymous founder specified the beverage should exhibit a strictly limited palette from light yellow to mid-umber ?”

There was an uneasy silence, broken at last by Redwood. “No problem! We’ll rename it Lady James!”

Gosh, Sylvia, you mean it doesn't have a happy ending? Then I certainly shan't be reading it. Why, it would be like letting Tinkerbell die.

Story of my life.

I haven't read 50 shades or the Da Vinci Code, but I'll admit to having enjoyed Wheatley's "The Devil Rides Out".

I haven't read them either, Gail, but somebody once made me watch the film, which was well renamed "The Da Vinci Cod".

Fifty shades of purple
 

Apologizing greatly, I assisted the young lady bookseller to arise, struck (as she had been, by my precipitate entry) with one of the dozen titles fallen unshelved- medical texts, clearly. With trained, darting looks, I recognized characteristic diagrams of Gray’s Anatomy; a frontispiece etching of Florence Nightingale; and standard treatise, ‘On Gangrene: Its Occurrence and Treatment’.

My interest, however, lay with ‘Fifty Shades of Purple’- new to me. But how apt! Had not Holmes, only yesterday, been beating cadavers at Bart’s with a riding crop?
Smiling appreciatively, without quibbling I paid and, with my purchase wrapped, hurried back to 221B.

“Watson!” Holmes shot out (languidly flicking pages while I awaited grateful thanks), “Why you present me with a compendium of florid, wordy prose- collated evidently to deter such errant writing- taxes even my deductive powers. Do you hope to shine, relatively? Or were you again preoccupied by auburn hair?”

When doing these sort of comps, I always assume that the word limit includes the title of story, though it would give me four words extra to play with if it didn't. Any thoughts?

I aways assume the opposite, that the title is separate from the narrative & it is the latter which is can be 150 words.

When the comp rubric supplies a complete title (e.g, #2727 “An unwelcome bequest”), it seems obvious that we’re free to use the full 150 words. Everybody’s title is the same in that case, and winning entries are printed without titles. But this comp is a bit different. Any title we come up with will be integral to our specific entry -- Fifty Shades of Graham Greene, Fifty Shades of Blue Peter, Fifty Shades of Red Menace, Fifty Shades of Night Are Falling. I suspect that Bazza’s on pretty firm ground with his assumption, but I’m a timid soul and will probably err on the side of caution. Naturally, I encourage everybody else to err in the opposite direction so that their entries might be disqualified and my odds improved.

Thanks Chris and Bazza. I have made my title the 'punchline' of my entry so as to circumvent the issue. Like you, Chris, I am timid about such things.

It might be an idea to get a ruling on this from Lucy, for future comps...?

Fifty Shades of Gravy did for my career. I specialise – rather, I specialised – in devising high concept television formats. In layman’s terms, I surfed zeitgeists, knew soapumentary from mockudocudrama and brainstormed titles that suggested concepts rather than the reverse. Equine origami infotainment extravaganza Only Foolscap Horses was one of mine, along with white goods retail fest Mr, Sell Fridge. I even brought posh lavatorial quiz Gameshow of Thrones to transmittable pilot stage. But then I scrawled Fifty Shades of Gravy across the Channel 4 whiteboard. Though the team were agog for a concept, I couldn’t deliver. Every telly chef I approached – their supply is, surprisingly, finite – opined that there simply aren’t fifty shades of gravy; those there are turn out to be in all other respects identical. Meanwhile, the sadomasochists declared the stuff the very definition of unerotic. Pitch stalled, I was fired before I could suggest Waltzing With Dinosaurs.

Fifty Grades of Che

Following the Arab Spring and the Ukrainian Euromaidan it seemed the zeitgeist was auspicious for the resurrection of that countercultural classic, the Che Guevara t-shirt. I optimistically screenprinted ten thousand of the standard black-on-red variety, but was dismayed to find they sold more like cold sick than hot cakes. A spot of market research quickly identified the problem: modern consumers expect a choice of designs and materials that reflect their politics and income bracket and the ‘Citizen Smith’ style just wasn’t cutting it. I responded by producing fifty different grades of the garment. These ranged from a solid gold shirt with an inlaid platinum Che and the words ‘HIPPY SCUM’ picked out in rubies, to a jam on recycled burlap version (the picture vanishes on the first wash, thus allaying any fears lefties might harbour about the commodification of the great man’s image.)

FIFTY SHADES OF DULUX

Let's paint it yellow, I suggested brightly, hoping to end a week of indecision.
Which yellow? my wife asked.
A yellowy yellow, I ventured, Cheerful and . . . well, yellowy.
Men! she exclaimed, opening the Dulux Colour Guide. Choose one.
I studied the page of tiny coloured rectangles. They all look much the same, I said.
Dear God!, she muttered. So pick one with a pin.
Bamboo Shoot? I said.
Too brown, she said.
Wild Primrose?
Too green.
Soft Yellow?
Too pink.
Lemon Zest?
Too yellow!
But we agreed on yellow, I said.
Yes, dear.
When I came home from work next day the kitchen was blue.
It's a yellow blue, she said firmly. . . .
The psychiatrist agrees that my cell's walls show just a hint of Lemon Spirit. But she has the nervous twitch of one who is a little too anxious to please.

Nice work, Rob, Martin.

50 SHAPES OF GREY

What was it that drew her to him—his vast wealth and power or his mysterious past as a circus contortionist? She couldn’t think—not with both arms pinned in his vice-like grip, as he pressed her to the wall using only his stiff upper lip. Meanwhile his other hand tugged her hair, forcing her face upward, while his tongue probed her quivering philtrum. His lower lip was undoing her blouse; she heard him gnawing the pearl buttons and a muffled pting!, as he spat each one into a cuspidor he’d balanced on her shoulder. His left leg rustled beneath her dress, removing garments that, with his right foot, he neatly stacked and folded. Thinking him thus fully engaged, she was startled to feel her feet leave the ground and to find herself lifted along the wall by degrees, helpless as a pallet on a forklift.

Frank

Fifty shades of windows
 

At the 1985 Microsoft shareholders meeting, Bill Gates unveiled the new Windows 1.0 operating system. “It’ll make us all rich!”

An old lady from Dubuque asked, “How will we make anything selling it for $100, if a computer lasts for 10 years?”

“Simple” replied Gates. “Planned obsolescence! We follow up with Windows 2.0, Windows 2.1/286, Windows 2.1/386, Windows 3.1, Windows 3.2, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows ME, Windows NT 3.1, Windows NT 3.5, Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows CE, and so on into the next millennium. Actually, each edition is obsolete the day we release it; but we’ll wait until the market’s saturated before we roll out its replacement!”

“Don’t you think we’re pulling the wool over the customer’s eyes?”, asked the lady.

“Uh, I wouldn’t put it that way. We’re merely pulling Window shades over their eyes. In fact, ultimately we’ll have fifty shades of Windows for those suckers….”

Douglas, I think you make Bill Gates appear far too scrupulous and well-meaning.

A lot of clever ideas! I've gone for something somewhat in the style of '50 Shades' (being the only one of us who admits to having read it!) But I suspect this is not really what Lucy is looking for...


FIFTY SHADES OF OBJECTOPHILIA

‘Stay in the left-hand lane... Exit ahead!’ How often had he thrilled to the timbre of Jane’s voice, while closeted in the steamy intimacy of his Fiesta. Each journey they shared, his erotic fantasies were stirred by the varied shades of her seductive tones. But today, their 50th, would be special. He had asked her to plan a route along deserted country lanes, avoiding main roads, so that they could be alone together. His hand was sweating as he felt for her ‘on’ button and the map flashed onto the screen, the quivering green arrow echoing his frenzied passion. The countryside sped past while, with mounting excitement, he submitted to Jane’s urgent demands ‘Turn left... turn right’, green arrow thrusting across the screen. He pressed the accelerator and felt the throb of the engine turning faster and faster... yes... yes... YES!
He had reached his destination.