A GROUP of two women and two blokes were having a serious debate over the purchase of a DVD in Tesco on Saturday. Afraid of missing something, I pretended to be perusing Father’s Day cards to find out the cause of their consternation.

What emerged was that they were – in my gran’s words – ‘coppering up’, to club together for the 50 Shades of Grey DVD. And it was the men doing the pushing.

MORE TOP STORIES:

I’d have expected that level of discussion over American Sniper, but 50 Shades? Hasn’t the public had enough of plastic handcuffs and fake orgasms yet?

I’ve never seen the film nor read the books. I don’t need to, I was supremely bored after leafing through one e-chapter. But then I was brought up on the likes of Erica Jong and Jilly Cooper who really knew how to write filth in a literary way.

I cut my sexual teeth on Skinhead and Suedehead, Richard Allen’s teen cult sex and violence novels of the 70s. They were passed around our all-girls Catholic convent school playground. Confiscation meant damnation, confession and multiple Hail Marys which made the experience so much more dangerous. By the time those books got into the hands of Mother Cristina, certain pages were so dog-eared they could hardly be read.

Now it seems that even Mills and Boon, which has been synonymous with romance novels for much of its 100 year history, is taking a leaf out of 50 Shades’ book and turning on to tack.

The passionate love affairs of the past, all bursting corsets and fevered brows, have become increasingly racy in recent years with previously fragrantly feminine heroines, going all Nicki Minaj.

Typical book titles like No Other Man, published in 1937, have been replaced with Best Man ....With Benefits. The brand even has an ultra-sexy line, Blaze, for the raunchiest of readers. One cover depicted a woman with her blouse open and showing an M&S T-shirt bra... the brazen hussey.

I’m just glad my gran, who used to put her initials at the back of every Mills and Boon in the library to remind herself that she’d read it, is not here to witness such a lowering of standards.

But seriously though, I have to wonder why the E.L James books, film and now DVD have been so phenomenally successful. Friends have said their partners have actively encouraged them to read/watch and excitedly anticipated the fall-out.

The only missing link is that the vast majority of British men are nothing like Christian Grey. Rich, good-looking, sexy, intelligent, own helicopter and GSOH are Hollywood preserves.

So for all those blokes who are encouraging their ladies to watch the DVD, be careful what you wish for - she might just end up disappointed and you could be handcuffed to that bed for a week.