Listeners of British comedy podcast “My Dad Wrote A Porno” often assume co-host Jamie Morton unintentionally stumbled upon his dad’s erotic novel, “Belinda Blinked,” he says.
But it was no accident.
“He sent it to me,” Morton says. “It was kind of worse than I could have ever imagined.”
Since the hit podcast started in late 2015, “My Dad Wrote A Porno” has been downloaded more than 200 million times. In each episode, Morton and his friends — James Cooper and Alice Levine — read one chapter and provide commentary.
The infamous “Belinda Blinked” chronicles the R-rated adventures of Belinda Blumenthal, the international sales director of a fictional company called Steeles Pots and Pans.
Morton’s initial reaction to the novel was not to start a podcast.
“My first thought was, I need to burn this and all evidence of this to the ground,” he says.
Morton pretended the “dad-rotica” didn’t exist for a while. But when curiosity led him to start reading the book, he says he realized it was “the most unintentionally hilarious novel — if we’re even going to call it a novel — ever written.”
He took the novel to the pub to share it with his friends. Levine and Cooper soon became obsessed with his dad’s work, and the trio decided they should share it with the internet.
“It took us about three hours to read two paragraphs because we kept interrupting and kept laughing,” co-host Levine says. “I personally just became utterly, utterly obsessed with it.”
The group would recite the words of Rocky Flinstone, Morton’s dad’s pen name, to other people. Sharing the novel made them realize they weren’t the only ones who found it fascinating, Levine says.
Four years later, the trio has written a book, starred in an HBO comedy special and is planning a tour across the U.S. this spring. Despite their global success, the co-hosts still record every episode in one of their kitchens in London.
On the city’s street, fans of the podcast will yell iconic lines from the book at the co-hosts — who’ve been called “Harry, Ron and Hermoine of pornography.”
Fan-favorite quotes include “her breasts hung freely, like pomegranates” and “the flesh of mankind” to describe male genitalia, Morton says. Listeners also love a line describing a character’s nipples as “being as large as the three-inch rivets which held the whole of the fateful Titanic together.”
Some listeners have said they were worried about sex before listening to the podcast, Levine says. Afterward, they realized that sex can be fun and not too serious, she says.
“Who knew the world was full of so many perverts?” Morton says.
In the book, Belinda travels around the world to sleep with as many clients as possible to procure business deals. Think of her as “the Elizabeth Bennet of porn,” Morton says.
“The great thing about Belinda is that she’s always in control of every single sexual scenario she’s in,” Morton says. “So she’s actually a bit of a feminist icon at this point. People love her for that.”
The book’s progressive characterization doesn’t end there: Everyone in the book seems to be sex-positive and pansexual — or “pots and pansexual,” he says.
The book takes place in a “sexual utopia” where women are empowered by sex — whether “Rocky Flintstone” intended that or not, Levine says.
“There isn’t loads of discussion about people’s sexuality,” she says. “People just have sex with who they want to have sex with.”
In his third installment, Morton’s dad has transitioned heroine Belinda’s story from sales to espionage and started concentrating more on the plot, less on sex. But fortunately for listeners, Morton says his dad’s writing hasn’t improved.
“It’s getting worse,” Morton says. “It’s really bad, actually.”
Francesca Paris produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Peter O’Dowd. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
This segment aired on December 16, 2019.
