British journalist Piers Morgan tried to use E.L. James to distract from his ongoing Twitter feud with J.K. Rowling, but the "Fifty Shades of Grey" author ended up spanking him on social media.
"Hi @E_L_James, any chance you could start tweeting me one of your books?" Morgan tweeted at the erotica writer. "I need some relief from this Harry Potter crap."
James responded: “I believed that the more exposure I got in the press, the better my career would progress. Trouble was, I became overexposed.”
The quote, as James later noted, is from Gilderoy Lockhart, a character in Rowling's “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”
Morgan and Rowling have been engaged in a Twitter tussle since Feb. 11, when Rowling tweeted approvingly about a comedian using an obscenity to dismiss Morgan during his appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher.”
“Yes, watching Piers Morgan being told to ... off on live TV is *exactly* as satisfying as I’d always imagined," Rowling wrote.
Morgan responded by writing that he'd “never read a single word of Harry Potter,” and criticized Rowling's “foul-mouthed, minor celebrity anti-Trump hysteria.”
Rowling then hit back twice. First, she noted that years ago, she beat Morgan to win the book of the year award at the British Book Awards for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” adding the hashtag #StillHurts.
Meanwhile, her fans and followers began tweeting lines from her Harry Potter series to Morgan. The campaign was launched by Big Green Bookshop, a London retailer that has been tweeting the entirety of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" to the media personality.
Rowling later tweeted a screenshot of a glowing description of her from a 2010 list of "British celebrities who really matter." The list, as it turned out, was written by Morgan.
Twitter users seemed delighted by James' response to Morgan.
"It's funny that @piersmorgan is so misogynist he can't comprehend that he's been outwitted by 2 women @jk_rowling & @E_L_James," tweeted freelance writer Alice Sanders.
And journalist Selina Wilken noted, "My favourite part of the JK Rowling vs Piers Morgan feud is that @e_l_james just won it."
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