'My Dad Wrote a Porno' Has Arrived In America

The greatest British export of all time—save for Earl Gray tea and myself—is "My Dad Wrote a Porno." I don't want to overstate this: "My Dad Wrote a Porno" is The Godfather of podcasts. On each episode, longtime friends Jamie Morton, James Cooper, and Alice Levine read aloud one chapter of Morton's father's erotic novel, Belinda Blinked, which is at once a creative monstrosity and a work of art.

With more than 150 million downloads, a potential film in the works, a sellout tour, and big-name fans that include Emma Thompson and Daisy Ridley, "My Dad Wrote a Porno" is a bit more than a cult favorite in Britain. I first heard about it in 2017, in a bar with an English friend who told me, unblinking, "I need you to listen to this, and you need to let me know when you do." At the time, I wasn't really into podcasts. "I'm kind of busy—" I demurred. She looked me flat in the eye. "Listen to it," she said, almost growling. Each and every day, I am grateful for her aggression.

This past winter, Levine, Cooper, and Morton—the latter of whom has become very famous and deeply mortified since launching the podcast in 2015—filmed a comedy special for HBO in London's Roundhouse Theater. It's billed as a live version of their podcast—something between a pre-recorded episode and a live comedy special à la Hannah Gadsby's "Nanette." The one-hour show, which dropped on HBO on Saturday, May 11, features Morton, et al., reading out a "lost chapter" of Rocky Flintstone's body of work (Rocky Flintstone is a pen name, I hasten to add), and inviting audience members to try to re-enact the weirder parts (and, I'm telling you, it was weird to start with).

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Consider HBO's My Dad Wrote a Porno a gateway drug—a one-hour taste of a wildly successful podcast series that, once you begin listening to, you can't drag yourself from. Although "MDWAP" already commanded a small but loyal American following, the HBO special is Morton and co's first big break on this side of the pond. "We genuinely thought it was a joke," Morton told Deadline Hollywood of being approached by the network. "We didn’t think HBO would want to do something about British pornography." He added: "They weren’t joking."

As for Rocky Flintstone, Morton's dad, he's still avidly writing. While some authors would be put off by reviews calling his writing "hackneyed" and "profoundly misguided," featuring an "extremely sketchy knowledge of female anatomy," this isn't the case for Rocky. "My God, he’s still writing loads all the time," Morton told Vulture. "He never thought anyone would read his books. When you put something on Amazon that’s self-published, you know the odds of anyone finding it are slim."

I don't know what he's talking about. How could you not buy a book on Amazon that's billed as such:

Guys, I'm not even going to start adding [sic]s to the above. I'm just not.

You can stream My Dad Wrote a Porno on HBO now, and listen to the podcast here.

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