My Dad Wrote a Porno: Jamie Morton on Turning Embarrassment into Podcast Gold

By Darby McNally  |  August 4, 2017 | 11:20am
Photos provided by My Dad Wrote a Porno
Comedy Features My Dad Wrote a Porno
My Dad Wrote a Porno: Jamie Morton on Turning Embarrassment into Podcast Gold

Warning: this interview contains spoilers for the critically acclaimed Belinda Blinked erotic novels. Proceed with caution.

Jamie Morton’s dad—penname Rocky Flintstone—wrote a porno. Like, a sex-filled, no-holds-barred, NSFW erotic novel, complete with a rather colorful interpretation of anatomy and a lot of questionable business tips.

The Belinda Blinked series chronicles the exploits of Belinda Blumenthal, the international sales director at the fictional Steele’s Pots and Pans, as she seduces her way to the top of the famously sexy cookware industry. On her journey, she engages in sexual (not quite sexy, but definitely sexual) encounters with both men and women. Morton recruited two of his friends, James Cooper and BBC Radio 1’s Alice Levine, to react to the novel in real time as he reads it to them across a kitchen table. The result is My Dad Wrote A Porno, an entertaining podcast with a cult following that is well into its third season.

We chatted with Morton, who, against all odds, is still a functioning human being despite reading his father’s innermost sexual fantasies, about the podcast’s growing popularity, a possible Belinda Blinked spinoff and his own theoretical penname.

Paste: My Dad Wrote A Porno has gotten majorly popular. Are you ever at the supermarket or just out and about somewhere and someone is like, “Hey! Your voice has been in my ear talking about pots and pans and the flesh of mankind!

Jamie Morton: Do you know what? Yeah. And it’s increasing more and more. Recently it was, “It’s porno guy!” I got that the other day. I was at a festival and someone shouted that. It’s quite complementary.

Paste: This is a question you probably get a lot, but, does it ever sink in that your dad has written this? I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that if their father wrote an erotic novel, they’d have trouble looking him in the eye, but you guys seem to get along just fine. Is it just accepted by you and your mom that this is just something he does?

Morton: It is now, yeah. Initially it was a little bit more challenging. Nothing can ever prepare you for your dad to write porn. But it’s what he does. We’re dealing with it in what I think is quite a healthy way. Like let’s just upfront admit it.

Paste: “Rocky Flintstone” is quite the alias. If you were to write erotica, what would your pen name be?

Morton: I don’t know! Someone suggested I should be Jamie Jetson of The Jetsons. Stay with the Hanna-Barbera theme.

Paste: What was The Flintstones character that was brought up before in the podcast? Like someone’s aunt or something?

Morton: Was it Slaghoople? Pearl Slaghoople?

Paste: Yes! Maybe that could be your mom?

Morton: Yeah she might be Slaghoople. Maybe I should be Bamm-Bamm.

Paste: Rocky is not known for his knowledge of the female anatomy. Does he still believe that one can grab a woman’s cervix?

Morton: I’m not sure. I’m not sure he ever believed it. I just don’t think he knows. I think he was just getting stuck for things to say, and I think he was just digging for another word for vagina. Cervix was close enough, but also not at all.

Paste: If Rocky were to write a spinoff of Belinda Blinked, which character would you like to see it centered around?

Morton: This was actually in a footnote we recorded recently. He wants to write about Sir James Godwin. He made this amazing backstory, like he had had three wives, one of whom died in a parachuting accident.

Paste: What characters in the Belinda Blinked world are you, Alice and James most like?

Morton: I think Alice is probably most like Helga, just because she enjoys her knitwear. James is the youngish man. Elijah Wood will of course be playing him in the eventual movie. Jamie would also be quite a good Tony. I might have to pass on me just because I don’t want to be a character in my dad’s erotic novel.

Paste: There are a lot to choose from, but which is your favorite hookup that Belinda has been a part of?

Morton: The plane one is quite good, with Hazel and “B3.” The Amsterdam shop window with the Countess Zara was quite a good one as well. It had quite a surprise to it.

Paste: We know Elijah Wood, Daisy Ridley, Michael Sheen and Mara Wilson are fans of the podcast. Are there any other high-profile celebrities who you think might be secret Belinkers?

Morton: Well James is fixated on the fact that Adele is a Belinker. It would be nice to think people like the royal family listened, like if Prince Harry was like a secret Belinker. We’ll take anyone. Everyone’s welcome in this perverted family.

Paste: You guys do live shows. You have your biggest live show ever at Royal Festival Hall coming up. Is there a chance we could get a few show dates in the United States sometime soon?

Morton: We are talking about it, yes. We very much want to perform to our Belinkers stateside. We’re actually going to Montreal soon. America is the next step.

Paste: Do you think you can convince Rocky to merge the Belinda Blinked universe with another universe, say, Star Wars or Game of Thrones, for his next novel?

Morton: I mean anything is possible. It doesn’t take my dad much convincing to do anything. And he is continuing to write at a worrying pace. To be fair, he wrote four before we started the podcast, so it isn’t that alarming of a pace.

 
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