“Jamie, why are we here?” came the familiar voice of Radio 1 DJ Alice Levine, on an indie podcast back in 2015. “We’re here because my dad’s written a porno,” Jamie replied, succinctly. And, with that, the aptly-titled My Dad Wrote a Porno was born, and a phenomenon began.
The show, which is releasing its final episodes over the next two weeks, had a simple premise. Jamie Morton’s father had written an erotic novel, Belinda Blinked, under the pseudonym “Rocky Flintstone”. Together with Levine and their friend James Cooper, the trio embarked on a read-through of the book, complete with its pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey quality understanding of human anatomy, and prose so purple it should seek urgent medical attention. A simple premise then, but an effective one: it has consistently ranked among the world’s favourite comedy podcasts for the duration of its seven-year run.
“Some people will be crying,” says Morton, in this week’s penultimate episode. “Some people will be going ‘I thought that ended years ago!’”. And it’s true that the cycle of Porno hysteria has had its ebbs and flows. For a moment in 2015, every other commuter on the London underground was creasing, listening to Belinda and the Duchess going at it. A book – the annotated work of Rocky Flintstone – was released in 2016, followed by an HBO special in 2019. They performed live at venues like the London Palladium and New York’s Radio City Music Hall. But, as the years have passed, other projects have intervened (Levine, particularly, is on TV with terrifying frequency) and the hype around the show has reduced to a slow simmer.
All the same, there can be little doubt of its impact. What Serial did for true crime podcasts, My Dad Wrote a Porno did for comedies. It came out in October 2015, almost a year later to the day after NPR released Serial on the world and podcasting went mainstream. “To call something the most popular podcast might seem a little like identifying the tallest leprechaun,” wrote David Carr in The New York Times on Serial’s release. “But the numbers are impressive for any media platform… Serial is arguably the medium’s first breakout hit.”
My Dad Wrote a Porno is less heralded, perhaps, but equally influential. It is the sum of fairly unoriginal elements – funny friends chatting, readalongs, trashing bad cultural products – which, together, become something quite special. It was by no means the first great comedy podcast (No Such Thing as a Fish, the “other” brilliant British comedy pod predates it by some 18 months) but it was the first to become a watercooler topic. “Have you heard about this grisly murder in Baltimore?” was replaced by “Have you heard about Steeles Pots and Pans and their eccentric marketing department employee, Belinda?”
Comedy is now the biggest genre in English-language podcasting, and also its most lucrative. Everything from SmartLess (the runaway hit featuring Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes) to the endless TV re-watch podcasts owe a debt to My Dad Wrote a Porno. It has been the most influential show in the world’s favourite genre; that’s some legacy.
And all this while remaining a real podcasty podcast. Keeping in all the profanities and vivid descriptions of orifices and appendages that would’ve been sanded down on BBC radio. Sounding like it was recorded over drinks in someone’s kitchen, rather than in a million-pound studio. Fuelled by irritating adverts for products you think you’d never want until, one day, you realise you have more mattresses than the princess and the pea. From its first episodes in 2015 to its last episodes this week, it has remained, blissfully, the same.
Three friends and one diabolical, self-published erotic novel. A simple, but unrepeatable, formula.