Something from the Cellar: Fifty Shades author; EL James
White Wine Question Time
Biscuit Jim
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2025
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
EL James doesn't do podcasts - in fact appropriately enough we popped her podcast cherry (Absolutely no safe words required).
As part of our look back at some of our favourite authors to have appeared on the podcast we couldn't look past this one. Erika (her real name) is one of the best selling authors on the planet - but her fame came later, after a successful career in British TV.
It is an extraordinary conversation - which took place back in 2001 - at a time when she was trying to juggle homeschooling and launching a range of adult toys. Weren't we all.
Hope you enjoy it - but just a word of warning, it probably is one for listening to on headphones - you can imagine but some of the chat is quite saucy.
Cheers
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to White Wine Question Time, the podcast that asks its guests, three thought-provoking questions over three glasses of wine. |
| 0:12.1 | And today we're heading back down to the cellar for another episode from our archive. |
| 0:16.1 | And this one makes up another part of our mini literature festival that we're holding this month, |
| 0:23.2 | featuring another bestselling author. |
| 0:29.0 | And when I say bestselling, I really mean this one is giving J.K. Rowling a run for her money. |
| 0:33.7 | But much of her career, today's guest was working in television as a head of production for comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. |
| 0:36.7 | And then her life changed. She became |
| 0:39.5 | enthralled with a book by Stephanie Myers called Twilight. It inspired her to write and post her own |
| 0:45.1 | stories online, often while she was commuting to and from the office. And she quickly built up a huge |
| 0:50.8 | following. These stories were later published as 50 Shades of Grey, the trilogy, |
| 0:56.1 | which introduced a whole new audience to erotica and bondage. The books were a colossal hit, |
| 1:03.3 | selling more than 165 million copies in 50 different languages and were adapted into a feature |
| 1:09.3 | film trilogy that grows more than |
| 1:11.4 | $1.3 billion. |
| 1:14.0 | It is a fascinating story and one I can't wait to relive, especially because E.L. James, |
| 1:20.4 | the author, does not do podcasts. |
| 1:23.6 | In fact, this may still be her one and only podcast appearance all the way from 2021. |
| 1:30.4 | It still sounds good. Enjoy. |
| 1:35.9 | I really am so appreciative if you're coming on the podcast because you've never done a podcast before, have you? |
| 1:40.8 | No, no, I haven't. I don't actually really like talking about myself, but we had |
| 1:45.4 | such a good time. I just enjoyed the thing that we did for the fade event. So I said, okay, let's do it. |
| 1:50.1 | And it's, no, thank you. Thank you for making me feel at ease. So I really appreciate it. |
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