Okay. You’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey and you’re curious. What exactly happens when people play with all those things in the bedroom in real life? You know, those, er, ‘toys’?

Before Fifty came on the scene, the items that Christian Grey uses during his sexual encounters with Anastasia Steele were probably a bit outside the standard sexual behaviour box for a good many people. But if this book has done one thing by going mainstream, regardless of what you think of its origins, the writing, and the way it portrays the BDSM lifestyle, it has opened the door for candid conversations between partners and – hopefully – allowed them to communicate more openly about things they’d like to try in (or out of) the bedroom.

That said, it’s one thing to read about these sorts of things in a book and quite another to go out, buy up the hardware aisle at Homebase, and experiment with your significant other. So, to quench your curiosity, we’re going to roadtest (well, our reviewers Lizzie and Thomas are) four of the items from E.L. James’s record-breaking novel – the blindfold, the crop, ‘the beads’ and the handcuffs – to help you decide whether you’d like to try them out yourself.

We’ll be posting the reviews in instalments, so make sure you visit Chintz later this week for the first in the series.

Fifty Shades of Grey is available from: Amazon.co.uk (Kindle ; paperback), Amazon.com (Kindle ; paperback), Barnes & Noble (Nook ; paperback), Kobo (eBook).