13 secrets of My Dad Wrote a Porno

This is how sexy it is: Jamie's dad's erotica – the Belinda Blinked saga, written by Rocky Flintstone (yup, that’s a pseudonym) – follows Belinda Blumenthal (sadly not a pseudonym), a sales director for Steele’s Pots and Pans through sex-crazed charity tombolas, raunchy rendezvous with a psychotic Duchess, and completely non-sexual regional meetings.

And the prose is even weirder: it’s a book where you’ll hear phrases like “her t**ts hung freely, like pomegranates”, and nipples are compared to “three inch rivets which had held the hull of the fateful Titanic together.” It. Makes. No. Sense.

It does, however, make for great listening (and you should definitely tune into to the new series – starting Monday 29 May). The hosts’ friendly and hilarious verbal annotations have earned them literally millions of listeners, including Michael Sheen, Daisy Ridley and Elijah Wood – all celebrities who have appeared as a guest on ‘Footnotes’ podcasts.

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Those are the basics, but there’s much more to learn about the anti-erotic podcast. We spoke to Jamie and James at the end of the last series to find out what you wanted to know...

1. Rocky Flintstone is a real person

No, he’s not a character; Rocky Flintstone really is the porn-penning father of Jamie Morton. He’s a retired builder from Northern Ireland who now spends his time writing erotica in the shed at the bottom of his garden (“very much like Roal Dahl used to do,” says James).

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You can even follow him on Twitter, and subscribe to his mailing list via his (extremely retro) website, where he'll promise to send you a copy of Belinda’s “pay slip with deductions”, “classified info” that Rocky says only himself and British Government has access to. It truly is another level of odd.

2. He’s written five Belinda Blinked books...

Series two of the podcast covered the second Belinda Blinked novel, but the show has got plenty more source material to deal with (we’re not sure whether this a good thing or not).

“Dad actually wrote most of the books before we even did the first podcast,” says Jamie. “By the time that I asked him if I could do a podcast about it, he said ‘well, I’ve written four books now!’ And now he’s just finished number five – he’s a writing demon!”

But they're not written off the cuff; all the books follow a mysterious narrative structure Rocky calls ‘The Timeline’ – “there’s a bigger plan in there somewhere,” says James.

3. ...And he plans to write even more

A lot more. “Rocky wants to write books forever,” says James. “I think he’s planned book 27!”

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4. They do very little prep

“Alice and James don’t read it and have never heard it before we record. But I tend to have a look at it the morning before to make sure I can read it aloud in some half-decent fashion,” explains James. “We’ve never once prepped. We literally just get around a kitchen table and start talking”

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So, why not prepare? The hosts avoid picking out talking points in order to create a “conversational” feel to the podcast. But it’s a strategy that doesn’t come without its worries: “We go into every week thinking ‘oh god, what’s he cooked up this time’ – hoping he’s got something," says James.

“But we shouldn’t be worried, every chapter has got some nugget of absolute genius. There’s always something in there that’s brilliant.”

5. They record a lot more than they need

You’re probably aware the final run time for most podcasts is whittled down from a massive slab of original recording into prime cuts. And despite MDWAP’s conversational tone, they still record for an hour and a half for 40 minutes of usable podcast.

“We definitely record more than we need,” says Jamie. “It can be a long one depending on the chapter whether we have a glass of wine in the middle.

“Also, we go on so many weird tangents. We talk about things that in the end we’re like ‘nobody even knows who that person is. Why are we talking about our mate down the road?’”