Fifty Shades of Grey Lakes hotel saga goes global (From The Westmorland Gazette)
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Fifty Shades of Grey Lakes hotel saga goes global
2:00pm Thursday 2nd August 2012 in News
By Helen Perkins, Reporter
A HOTELIER who swapped bedroom Bibles for a raunchy read has been warned he will suffer ‘plagues and pestilence’ for his decision.
The Damson Dene Hotel was inundated with emails after staff removed the King James Bible from its rooms to replace it with Fifty Shades of Grey.
When news of the switch reached US television networks, hotel owner Jonathan Denby was faced with 200 emails a day demanding he bring back the holy text.
“One said I needed to repent or my hotel would be destroyed by fire, flood or pestilence,” said Mr Denby, who has given interviews on San Francisco Radio and to several newspapers.
The story has also featured on NBC News and Fox News.
It also attracted 576 comments on the NBC website and more than 10,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook.
A poll by NBC asking ‘which book would you be more likely to pick up in a hotel bedroom’ produced 32,381 votes.
Fifty Shades of Grey won with 42 per cent of the vote to the Bible’s 37 per cent – the rest being ‘neither’.
Despite the storm of protest over the pond, Mr Denby, who owns the hotel in Crosthwaite, said there were no plans to remove Fifty Shades of Grey, the international best seller by E L James.
He said: “I think the emails are amusing. I’m not taking it seriously at all because it’s not a serious subject. We have had floods in two of our rooms but the hotel is fine. I have told those opposed to our ideas that they will have to pray harder.”
Mr Denby said he was planning to put a new best-seller in his hotel rooms each month to match public interests.
He added: “Customers have loved Fifty Shades of Grey and the one complaint we had was from a visitor who found a previous guest had taken their copy home. Next month, we might offer the follow-up Fifty Shades Darker.”
Last year, The Damson Dene was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary staring manager Wayne Bartholomew, whose idea it was to switch the Bible for Fifty Shades of Grey.
Mr Bartholomew said: “I'm afraid to say we’ve had some very nasty comments from America, assigning us to hell and calling us puppets of Satan.
“On the other hand we’ve had many emails of support, telling us not to take any notice of fanatical religious types.”
Mr Denby added that the reaction in England had been ‘marvellous’ and the hotel had never been busier.
Comments(4)
worldsgonemad
says...
11:15pm Thu 2 Aug 12
Hugh Jaynus
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11:22am Sat 4 Aug 12
wezzyk
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11:36pm Thu 9 Aug 12
FrontalLobe says...
7:41pm Thu 2 Aug 12
Your own newspaper weekly has a religious column full of outlandish and unsubstantiated assertions posing as ‘evidence’. (I have only ever read it for amusement). You also often print letters from believers who give the impression of being the sort of people that you would not wish to sit next to on the bus.
I think people should be able to practise whatever belief they wish but as can be seen in the U.S. (and sometimes here) they often are not happy unless they can foist it on the rest of us whether we want it or not. Then they can turn quite nasty when we say no or take the mickey.