We’re not heroin addicts, but if we were – and heroin was made of books about rubbish schoolboy wizards – we’d be screwed.

Because if that was true, then JK Rowling would be our dealer. And Rowling is a mean dealer, too – she’s been withholding our supply, probably until we break down and agree to let her become our pimp or something – but yesterday JK Rowling threw us a lifeline.

Because yesterday JK Rowling released her new book The Tales Of Beedle The Bard – kind of like the methadone to Harry Potter’s hardcore skag – and somewhat predictably it instantly became a bestseller.

Never let it be said that JK Rowling isn’t an intelligent woman. She knows as well as anyone else that nothing she ever does for the rest of her life will be as popular as Harry Potter and that, once the Harry Potter series had ended, there was a strong chance that she’d be on the scrapheap. A really nice scrapheap, obviously, made of great big gold scraps that your entire family couldn’t afford even if they worked every hour of the day for their entire lives, but a scrapheap nonetheless.

So what did JK Rowling do? She made sure that an important plot device in the last Harry Potter book was The Tales Of Beedle The Bard – a gimmicky spin-off book that she could then write herself and flog off to the millions of children who’d buy a rancid squirrel carcass if it was branded with the Harry Potter logo. Genius.

It’s important to note that JK Rowling didn’t publish The Tales Of Beedle The Bard for the money – all proceeds from it are going to charity – but for the supercharged thrill of knowing that if she was any more powerful she’d legally qualify as a god and that she can crush her enemies like bugs whenever she wants. And, you know, because she likes writing and children and charity and crap.

Anyway, JK Rowling released The Tales Of Beedle The Bard yesterday and, as if you needed telling, it was instantly snapped up by everyone hungry to get their hands on a fresh slice of authentic Harry Potter literature, even if none of them would know what a bloody Beedle was if it came up and shat in their mouths. The New York Daily News reports:

J.K. Rowlings new book “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” hit stores Thursday, and it looks like Harry Potter fans can’t get a copy fast enough! The book soared to the top of the online bestsellers lists on Amazon.com and the Barnes&Noble Web site. A $100 collector’s edition offered exlusively on Amazon.com had skyrocketed from 778,576 to 22 on the site’s ”Movers & Shaker’s” list, which tracks the biggest gainers in sales rank.

Now, look, we know it’s for charity and everything, but know this – if you see anyone reading the $100 version of The Tales Of Beedle The Bard in public, it’s your moral and legal obligation to knock the book out of their hands and into a puddle to make them cry. Just so you know.

Anyway, now that The Tales Of Beedle The Bard is officially a hit, all we need to do is sit back and wait for the inevitable movie adaptation to hit cinemas, something which we’re particularly looking forward to because – if the Harry Potter actor tradition holds – it won’t be long before Babbitty Rabbitty gets her cackling stump out onstage during a theatrical production of Equus.

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