HUNDREDS of thousands of tickets were sold in the UK in advance of Sam Taylor-Wood’s screen version of Fifty Shades Of Grey.

British author E.L. James selfpublished the first instalment of her erotically charged trilogy before the first hardback edition was released in March, 2012.

Critics might have been less than flattering, giving the book a sharp verbal spanking, but the public were seduced by James’ depiction of the intensely physical relationship bet-ween a college graduate and a handsome businessman, propelling the tome to the top of the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the UK, such was the clamour for the paperback that Fifty Shades outsold J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, and opened the floodgates to a raft of books crudely dubbed ‘mummy porn’.

Aside from the removal of one of the book’s most infamous scenes involving a tampon, the glossy big screen adaptation purportedly remains faithful to James’ text, and the author was on the film set every day to keep a close eye on proceedings.

As a favour for her roommate, Kate (Eloise Mumford), literature student Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) interviews handsome and charming multimillionaire businessman Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan).

Anastasia is bewitched by Christian and makes clear her desire for him, so to get closer to the object of her affections she submits to him, and he introduces her to an erotically charged world of domination, lust and temptation which, thankfully, did not get the UK censors hot under the collar.