Jamie Morton was horrified to discover his father had written very explicit, and very bad, erotic fiction under the nom-de-porn Rocky Flintstone.
He enlisted his friends - James Cooper and Radio 1 host Alice Levine - to help read it aloud, creating the massively successful My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast.
The podcast is now one of the most successful ever made, with over 180 million downloads, and will tour New Zealand as a live show in 2020, details here.
Alice Levine, Jamie Morton and James Cooper Photo: My Dad Wrote a Porno
The story Flintstone has created, Belinda Blinked, features a promiscuous saucepan saleswoman called Belinda Blumenthal and is appallingly funny.
Morton told Kim Hill that his father is indeed real, and is a retired builder from Northern Ireland and who spends half of the year in Brazil.
“He isn't called Rocky Flintstone but everything else is true, that is his pen name. I couldn't possibly divulge his real name, but yes it's all true. I mean, I find it quite flattering when people think that it's made up because it's a blooming good idea. And if I'd have come up with it on my own I would be in Hollywood, I'd have made it in in lights, but no.
“It's all true unfortunately, my life took a weird turn when my dad started writing porn in the garden shed. But it's been quite a lovely journey - you know I've made lemonade out of lemons as they say.”
Morton’s father first showed him Belinda Blinked in 2015, he says.
“I read it, obviously, and found it hilarious and in the most unintentional way, and I said Dad you should really keep writing these you know nudge nudge, wink wink, please keep writing them - and he said: 'I've written four already'.
"So we've had four seasons, four of these books had already been written before the podcast which is very fortuitous.”
Flintstone is impervious to the podcast’s ruthless deconstruction of his fiction, Morton says.
“He thinks it's great literature, let alone good erotica. He really thinks that these books are good, and I think that's what is kind of impressive about his writing, he doesn't really listen to the critics.”
He does however listen avidly to the podcast, Morton says.
“He really loves all of the bants with it. He's impervious to any sort of critique and actually after each episode goes out he sends the three of us an email. He will say things like 'Alice you were really mean, but bring it next time' I want more. So he's really, really into the whole thing.”
The podcast has attracted a legion of celebrity fans; Elijah Wood, Michael Sheen, Daisy Ridley and Emma Thomson among them.
Dame Emma recently appeared on a ‘footnotes’ episode of the podcast and she believes Flintstone to be one of the great feminist writers of our time.
“When you think about it, he's a 60-year-old, straight, white man and he chose to write an erotic novel about women.”
Thomson is so taken with the books that she’s jockeying to play one of Flintstone’s characters, The Duchess, should Belinda Blinked ever be made into a movie. Although Daisy Ridley also expressed an interest in that part, says Morton.
“Well, she'd already bagsied that on a previous episode of footnotes. So, there is a bit of a back and forth with The Duchess. It's a great character I can get why Dame Em and Daisy want it, but you know who is going to get it?
"I think they could both do it; Daisy could play in the prequels or the flashbacks and then Dame Em can do it, you know, in present day as it were.”
Morton, Levine and Cooper have toured their podcast all over the world and Morton says fans delve deeply into the minutiae of Flintstone’s novels.
“They actually dress up as quite obscure characters that's what's interesting. My dad has a real talent for creating characters who last all of three sentences, maybe four and then they disappear again. But he has such a way with words and characterisation that these people become kind of iconic characters in their own right.
“And so people come dressed as Alfie The Smallish Man Dressed in Black; that's his full title. He is the character that miked up Belinda when she was doing a pots and pans conference at the O2 which is our great, massive, 20,000-seat venue for music acts like Beyonce - that's where they do the pots and pans conventions in his books.”
Flintstone’s similes and phrase-making are legendary; Nipples are like rivets on the Titanic, breasts are pomegranates - although his knowledge of female anatomy is shaky to say the least.
“His knowledge of the female anatomy is challenged certainly, but not of the female psyche,” says Morton.
