Miranda Sawyer 

My dad wrote a porno – and I turned it into a podcast

When his father wrote a dreadful erotic novel, Jamie Morton read out the juicy bits to two friends. The hilarious result is now a hit comedy podcast. Miranda Sawyer meets the naughty threesome
  
  

James Cooper and Alice Levine hold red peppers in front of Jamie Morton's chest. He looks faux shocked and is holding open the book My Dad Wrote a Porno
What a handful: James Cooper, Jamie Morton and Alice Levine read from My Dad Wrote a Porno, inspired by Rocky Flintstone’s Belinda Blinked. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer

In a packed theatre in the basement beneath the Observer’s offices, I am watching a live sex show. Well, a live show about sex. It’s not that raunchy, to be honest. On stage, three friends – Jamie Morton, James Cooper and Alice Levine – sit on comfy chairs. Morton reads out a supposedly erotic story, which involves several members of a sales team. (They trade in pots and pans: hot!) Other characters include Belinda Blumenthal – our enthusiastic and uninhibited heroine – and a woman who’s leading a training day. Belinda, the trainer and, indeed, the whole sales team soon move on from a dice game to something more intimate, unlikely and hilarious.

As Morton reads the chapter, he, Cooper and Levine make comments. There is much that demands a response: the inappropriate vocabulary (are rivets a suitable metaphor for nipples?), the strange details (one character removes his clothes but decides to sit on a sock), the anatomically ludicrous sauciness. At one point, a couple of audience members are asked on stage to try to act out what’s happening in the chapter. They can’t, because the moves are physically impossible. At the start of the evening, a drinking game is established, where every time Belinda blinks, or there’s an unnecessary detail about an item of furnishing (this happens more often than you might imagine), everyone is required to have a drink. The audience – one or two who are actually dressed as Belinda – join in with enthusiasm. It’s fun.

This entire evening all stems from just one chapter in the adventures of Belinda Blumenthal. Her naughty escapades form what could loosely be called the plot of Belinda Blinked, an erotic novel written by Rocky Flintstone. And yes, that’s a pseudonym. In real life, Flintstone is a retired father of four. One of his children is Jamie Morton.

My Dad Wrote a Porno is, for Morton, the truth. His dad did write a porno – “Well, a dirty book”, says Morton. On retirement, his dad decided he was going to write a novel, along the lines of “50 Colours of Grey,” as he called it. It didn’t take him too long and, once he was done, he emailed a few chapters to his only son – who ignored them, as you would. When Morton finally plucked up the courage to open the Belinda Blinked files, he took them to a Christmas lunch, where he read out parts to his friends, including Cooper and Levine. Soon after, they turned it into a podcast. Each week, Morton reads out a chapter and the three friends comment.

“But the show isn’t really porn, though,” says Levine, a few days later, when I meet them in a café. “The title is click-baity, but the content isn’t that shocking…”

“My dad doesn’t really write sex,” says Morton. “It’s very much an anatomical exercise.”

“We might have been desensitised though,” points out Cooper. “I mean, before this show I would never have said the words tit-clit. We’ve been coarsened.”

The podcast – three friends laughing about something they all find funny – could easily have fallen into an “in-joke” podcast. But Morton edits and produces the show, ensuring that each programme is far from the waffling self-indulgence of that familiar (and boring) model. It helps that the three are very funny together. There is nothing laddy about it either. Often, Morton and Cooper are confused. “Sometimes the boys are like… well, Alice?” says Levine. “And I’m, like, I can’t speak for everyone, I’m sure some people are into that, but I can’t put my name to that action!”

Anyway, from the moment it launched, in 2015, My Dad Wrote a Porno has been a success. This, despite the lack of publicity. Initially, iTunes wouldn’t list it because of its rude title, but it’s now No 1 on the UK chart. Advertisers ran a mile for similar reasons. But listeners loved it. It’s been downloaded 18m times and there are numerous spin-offs, including merchandise and a book: essentially Belinda Blinked, in all its appalling glory, with notes from the trio. There is talk of a musical, perhaps a TV show.

To be honest, there is a lot of talk about a lot of things. Morton, Cooper and Levine spiral off into many topics, as funny in real life as they are on air. They met at Leeds University more than a decade ago, in the TV department, and they clearly still enjoy each other’s company. “For the podcast, we just go round to each other’s houses and have a nice meal and a catch-up,” says Morton. “I get drunk and the other two don’t, then we set up the mics.”

Their first job in London after university was for Bebo, where they had to send people’s messages into space. Since then, they’ve made YouTube shows and dramas together, as well as pursuing their own, separate media careers (Levine is a Radio 1 presenter). Savvy but not cynical, they knew that MDWAP could be a success from the pilot episode. To check his family would be OK about it, Morton played the pilot to his three sisters, as well as both his parents, all at once. “My mum said: ‘This is disgusting, I want no part of it!’ and went up to her bedroom. So it was just me, my sisters and my dad. But then my mum crept back down! That’s the only episode she’s heard.”

The podcast also has extra shows that talk around the books. These sometimes have celebrity guests, such as Elijah Wood, who Levine met when he came in to do an interview for her Radio 1 show, and Star WarsDaisy Ridley, who contacted the show via Instagram. All are actual fans of the show, as opposed to star bookings. “Everyone’s obsessed with Rocky, to be honest,” says Morton. Rocky perfected his celebrity signature on a family holiday.

And how long will MDWAP last? As long as Rocky keeps ’em coming.

“We actually can’t stop him from writing,” says Morton. “We’ve tried, legally… No, he’s written number five in the series. There’s definitely another year of it. He’s in his pavilion as we speak, well his garden shed, bashing them out until he’s called in for his tea. He’s not allowed to write in the house. My mum won’t let him.”

My Dad Wrote a Porno: The Fully Annotated Edition of Belinda Blinked 1 by Jamie Morton, James Cooper, Alice Levine and Rocky Flintstone is published on 27 October by Quercus at £12.99. To order a copy for £10.65, go to bookshop.theguardian.com

 

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