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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And that’s because now everyone’s reading Twilight instead, despite the fact that reading a staunchly conservative abstinence manifesto dressed up as a slushy emo romance fantasy in front of other adults is far worse than reading Harry Potter.

So hooray for JK Rowling, who tomorrow releases her new Harry Potter spin-off book The Tales of Beedle the Bard, either for charity or to help us identify idiots more easily on the tube. Merry Christmas to you too, JK!

We thought that JK Rowling had been living in idle luxury since the publication of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows last year, maybe ordering 50 pizzas at once and then crapping all over them, or maybe giving the homeless urine-covered five-pound notes to take off their trousers and sing I’m A Little Teapot as loudly as possible. We’d expect JK Rowling does that because it’s exactly what we’d do if we earnt £13,000 an hour, too.

But we were wrong. Just because she’s so rich that she could tile her swimming pool with orphan teeth if she wanted, JK Rowling has found endless things to do with her time – like suing people who admire her and talking down to people more intelligent than her. And she’s also managed to make a clean break and move on from her Harry Potter days, too.

Well, OK, not a clean break, exactly. Or any other kind of break, for that matter. In fact, JK Rowling has pretty much carried on writing about Harry Potter regardless, like a woman who hasn’t stopped packing her husband’s lunchbox every morning even though he died a year ago.

The Tales Of Beedle The Bard might be familiar to some Harry Potter fans because not only was it alluded to in the Harry Potter novels, but it’s also the book that JK Rowling handwrote and auctioned off for almost £2 million last year. And now, in a peculiarly millionaire-spiting move, JK Rowling will tomorrow widely publish a printed, easier-to-read version of The Tales Of Beedle The Bard at a generously pikey-friendly price. Reuters reports:

A new book by British author J.K. Rowling, her unofficial farewell to the adventures of boy wizard Harry Potter which made her the world’s wealthiest writer, goes on sale on Thursday. Proceeds from “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” expected to become an international bestseller even though the seven-book Potter series is over, will go to a charity for vulnerable children in Eastern Europe co-founded by Rowling.

Now, we haven’t researched this properly, but the charity that proceeds of The Tale Of Beedle The Bard will go to is either The Children’s High Level Group which campaigns to protect and promote children’s rights across Europe, or The Stitch This Harry Potter Merchandise Faster And I Might Give You Some Of My Food Foundation, which we’ve just made up. But it’s definitely one of those two.

But if you don’t want to The Tales Of Beedle The Bard, then don’t worry. Knowing what a cash cow Harry Potter is, it’s only a matter of time before someone at Warner Bros adapts it into a movie. And that way, rather than helping some whiny European kids, you’ll be lining the pockets of an obnoxious power-crazed nonspecific Hollywood executive who we imagine cheats on his wife with a teenager and spends his weekend throwing pebbles at dogs.

Which is better, obviously.

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