Listeners of My Dad Wrote a Porno will be treated to a guest appearance of the titular dad, who has remained elusive during the eight-year run, in the podcast’s final episode next month.
Jamie Morton, Alice Levine and James Cooper last week recorded the concluding three episodes of the show, labelled “the most successful podcast in British history”, with the first due to be released on 28 November.
The hit format involves Morton reading a chapter of his father’s amateur erotic novels, Belinda Blinked – which are riddled with typos and inconsistencies, as well as somewhat unorthodox descriptions of the female anatomy – to the amusement of his friends Levine and Cooper.
In the final episode, released on 12 December, listeners will at last get to hear the voice of Morton’s dad, who goes by the “nom de porn” Rocky Flintstone.
Morton said: “It was really nice getting him on there and finally giving him a platform to tell his side of the story and his perspective on the whole success of the show.”
Cooper added: “We had so much we wanted to ask him, really fundamental stuff like: ‘Why did you do this in the first place?’
“I don’t want to spoil anything but he has a beautiful radio voice actually.”
It comes eight years and 430m downloads after the trio began recording the podcast as a fun project after work.
They decided to say goodbye in May, so have had “a bit of time to get used to it”, Morton said, but “it’s bittersweet really”.
He said: “I think when we first made that choice, it was a little bit like, oh my gosh, this is like a massive thing.
“And now it’s just been so nice recording these last episodes, doing an episode with my dad for the first time, which was brilliant. We recorded that last week. So yeah, it feels like it’s a really nice time for us to kind of go out on our terms, and hopefully give all of our amazing listeners a really nice little Christmas send-off.”
The contagious hilarity of My Dad Wrote a Porno has taken its presenters across the globe, selling out shows at venues including the Sydney Opera House and Radio City Music Hall in New York, and introduced them to a host of celebrities such as the songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda and the actors Emma Thompson and Michael Sheen.
Recently they were even contacted by Nasa. “An astronaut on the International Space Station asked to speak to us to help with their mental health, because they listen to Porno,” Cooper said.
“So that was like, what? We knew we were global but we didn’t know we were intergalactic.”
Since the 2015 launch of My Dad Wrote a Porno, the broadcasters, who met at university in Leeds, have been able to build on its success.
Levine, a radio and TV presenter who hosted a show on BBC Radio 1 and most recently made the Channel 4 documentary Sex Actually with Alice Levine, recently recommissioned for a second series, said she had previously “been realising other people’s ideas”.
“That has changed dramatically since we started doing the podcast together. I think our show proved that we had good instincts, we understood an audience, and knew how to make something from scratch. So people want to hear our ideas now.
She added: “I think there’s a legitimacy born of building something slowly and steadily, and doing every part of it. I feel like we’ve learnt so much by having a go.”
And while there will be no more podcasts about the raunchy adventures of Belinda Blumenthal, a sales executive at Steele’s Pots and Pans, the Porno brand will continue in some form and there will be more to come from the trio.
Keeping tight-lipped about future plans, Cooper said: “We’ve always worked together and that will carry on. But I won’t say too much.”
