In the latest in a series of slow news day-saving incidents that we might as well group together under the headline ‘Chris has had a long, tiring day and needs a big, fat, easy target’, full-time Fifty Shades of Grey cheerleader and occasional novelist Bret Easton Ellis has once again refused to let a piffling thing like flat-out rejection by its makers stand in the way of his weighing in on every aspect of the book’s forthcoming cinematic adaptation. Remember when people used to freely admit to reading Bret Easton Ellis? Weird times.

Earlier this week, Ellis claimed (via his consistently eyeroll-inducing Twitter feed) to have what he called ‘inside information’ on the casting of the film, suggesting that the eponymous (I guess?) role of Christian Grey could go not to Ryan Gosling – whom previous reports and the Venn Diagram overlap between fans of Fifty Shades and proprietors of all those ‘hey girl’ Tumblrs had cited as a frontrunner – but to Ellis’s Close Personal Friend James Deen (not a typo, and for the love of God, if you’re in work just take my word for it and don’t Google that until you’ve read the next paragraph).

In its way, the casting would be weirdly apt, because Deen – for anyone who doesn’t keep up with feminist memes, which, come on, what is wrong with you? – is a porn star, widely lauded as a ‘boy next door’ type and embraced (to say the least) for his non-threatening looks and personality by a brace of women who normally wouldn’t be caught dead watching porn. His appearing as Christian Grey would potentially help to legitimise porn actors in mainstream cinema, in much the same way that E.L. James’ book opened the floodgates (as it were) for sales of erotic fiction.

Of course, I could speculate that Deen’s carefully maintained persona is perhaps too nice-guy-ish to convince as someone who needs to break out whips and such (incidentally, look out for my ice cream parlour of that name opening later this year – it’ll be fifty flavours of fun!), but then I’d be engaging with this in a manner that would only play into Ellis’ hands.

So why should you care about any of this, you’re probably wondering? In all honesty, you shouldn’t, except that it continues to be the biggest thing to happen to publishing since Harry Potter, and keeping abreast of all subsequent developments as it trundles on is likely in everyone’s best interests. Their dreary, inane, repetitive interests. See you next slow news day.