Grey: Like many things nowadays, nobody likes the new Fifty Shades book....except the public

You haven’t bought Grey, the new Fifty Shades sequel by EL James? Obviously you haven’t. Nor have your friends. And even if any of you have, no one will admit it. In polite society, a woman who wishes to be well thought of can admit that she read the first chapter of the first book, but only if she then goes on to say that she threw it away because:

(a) it was APPALLINGLY badly written,

(b) it wasn’t AT ALL sexy,

(c) the relationship between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey was sick, misogynistic and profoundly abusive, or

(d) all of the above.

But 125 million copies of the Fifty Shades trilogy have been sold across the world. So somebody’s reading them. And 647,401 of them snapped up Grey in its first three days in the UK. By way of comparison, Victoria Hislop’s novel The Sunrise topped the pre-Grey bestseller list with 28,450 copies sold in the previous week. Grey shifted almost as many copies every three hours.

It seems the Shy Tories aren’t the only ones who don’t like to admit what they really think. There must be an awful lot of Shy Shadies who can’t get enough of Christian Grey’s whip-cracking ways.

These disparities between reputation and popularity are everywhere, from Mad Men to McDonalds. The former seemed a huge hit. The stylish way it depicted a world thrillingly filled with fabulously dressed people smoking at the office, getting smashed at lunch (on expenses!) and shamelessly shagging their big-breasted female subordinates sent the media into raptures. But almost nobody actually watched it.

Contrarily, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and the like are heartily despised by anyone with an interest in healthy eating, the environment or keeping us safe from multinationals. But – forgive me, Lord – how I love the 996-calorie sinfulness of a BK Double Angus burger with smoked bacon and cheddar. Me, and a gazillion other fast-food eaters.

Likewise Borgen had middle-aged, metropolitan dinner-parties abuzz with chat about how wonderful it would be if we could have a Prime Minister like the divine Birgitte Nyborg. But less than a million Brits watched Borgen’s top-rated episode, as opposed to the 13.4 million who watched a dog called Matisse win Britain’s Got Talent.

Of course, on one level, this is a statement of the obvious: mass entertainment is more popular than (relatively) high culture. But there’s more to it than that, because an inability to appreciate – or even admit – what people actually like, as opposed to what they’re supposed to like, can seriously distort our perceptions of society.

The pollsters’ failure to depict the true level of Conservative support creates a false perception of the political zeitgeist. Everyone you know may think that the Tories are appalling racist bastards. But millions of voters don’t.

Likewise, vast numbers of women clearly feel aroused, rather than demeaned, by the Shades of Grey books and think that they’re well-enough written to keep reading and buying them. And no amount of sniffy criticism is going to change their minds.

And who’s to say who’ll be proved right in the end? In any cultural history of the Seventies, 1977 is always seen as the year of the punk revolution. Well, I was there and it was certainly a real Year Zero. To be a true believer, you had to profess total hatred and disdain for dinosaur music, made by boring old farts – the stuff that you had, up until 31 December 1976 really liked.

Pop was shit. Disco was double-shit. Smooth soft-rock from California, made by long-haired old hippies who snorted coke and sang about their pampered lifestyles, was ultra-super-hyper-crap so offensive that its very existence could scarcely be admitted. And yet, the public – damn them! – kept buying Abba and the Bee Gees and that absolute quintessence of Californian soft rock, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.

Fast forward to 2015. On Monday I went to London’s O2 Arena to see Fleetwood Mac in concert. The sold-out crowd were on their feet from the first song to the last. The band played almost all of Rumours and it still sounds amazing. As it did in ’77 of course: much, much better than 99.9 per cent of all known punk.

We didn’t dare to admit it, just as today people say Fifty Shades of Grey is appalling. But secretly, when no one’s looking, they think it’s brilliant.

And consider this: they might be right.