In September 2015, a show with a rather unlikely title and slightly naff red logo appeared. For those not adept at reading titles, the premise of My Dad Wrote A Porno was that Jamie Morton would read aloud from his father’s self-published erotic novel, Belinda Blinked, and discuss it with his old university pals, Alice Levine and James Cooper. Over the next eight years and seven seasons, the filth juggernaut has rolled across the globe, picking up celebrity fans in the form of Emma Thompson, Daniel Radcliffe, Jon Ronson and many more. Throughout all of its absolutely wild plot twists – the blue semen, the vaginal smoke and spirals in the mud – its author has remained shrouded in mystery. Until now. For in the podcast’s last ever episode, the infamous Rocky Flintstone has finally taken to the microphone and gone on record, speaking to the show’s three hosts. So what did we learn about the man behind the muck?
He had no idea what a podcast was
The retired Irish builder, landscape gardener and concrete expert claims to have known little about podcasts when his son approached him with the idea. “My first response was, what’s a podcast?” he says, before revealing that he has only listened to the podcast once: “That’s enough for me.” Fair enough. Did Shakespeare sit through every performance? Does Jilly Cooper listen to her own audiobooks as she deadheads the roses? Did Milton have Paradise Lost in the downstairs loo? I doubt it.
Belinda Blinked was his 63rd book
Or his 65th. He can’t be tied down on specifics and why should he be? Before the lucrative move to business pornography, the self-publishing star wrote short, humorous books such as How to Buy a House in Brazil and How to Survive the Brazilian World Cup. Since his soaraway podcast success, these titles now sell … up to eight a week.
His wife, Wilma, is to blame/be thanked
In 2014, after renovating a house outside London, Rocky was at a loose end. His books were selling like cold cakes and with no more fireplaces to install, he had time on his hands. Until, one day, his wife said: “The only thing that sells is sex.” And lo, Belinda Blinked – an erotic business novel that manages to be both unsexy and sketchy as far as business acumen goes – was born.
Belinda Blumenthal was a real woman
Well, sort of. During the interview, Rocky reveals: “I met Belinda when I was selling ReadyMix concrete in Manchester many years ago.” The woman in question was selling cleaning materials. She had flowing black hair, what Rocky enigmatically calls “warlord long leather boots” and had, you guessed it, “fantastic breasts”. Suffice to say, he put in a lot of orders for cleaning products that year.
He has his own business cards
In 2016, I was lucky enough to receive one such card and have carried it around in my wallet ever since. It has a picture of a prostrate naked woman on one side and an email address on the other. Very classy. I never wrote to him.
He also named his car Belinda
Apparently, much of Belinda Blinked is, unfathomably, autobiographical. For instance, during one of four trips to Spain, Belinda (the car) got a flat tyre, which inspired the harrowing cliffhanger car crash scene on the way back from Epsom Hall in season three. “I’m 60-plus years old now,” says Rocky. “And all my life has been put into these books in one way or another.” For example, Rocky says the scene in which Belinda performs oral sex on Jim Sterling’s “monster dick”, and she subsequently has to floss her teeth to get rid of the flaky skin (mmmm, erotic), “happened to me many times”. Although the flossing Rocky had to do wasn’t necessarily following an incident with a gigantic phallus, but eating fish. Or chicken.
He writes the books nude
Or as he delicately puts it: “I write best in the sun … with not many clothes on.” The literary powerhouse can knock out 1,200 words in just two hours and types it all on to “the cheapest possible computer”. Two computers, in fact, just in case he spills chardonnay on one and has to put it in a plastic bag in the freezer for a while to recover. Rocky, we should say, is not a computing engineer and this approach to liquid mishaps is not universally endorsed.
He considers himself a cipher for the Norse gods
If 1,200 words in two hours sounds inhumanly fast, it may help to know that Rocky believes his typing to be the work of God. Or the Norse gods. Or aliens. Take your pick. He loves the semicolon, warns against ever killing off your real goodies or real baddies and explains that phrases such as “labial pinkness” are to be used like salt and pepper; sprinkled through the text to keep the tastebuds excited. I may never eat salt and pepper squid again.
He grew up in Northern Ireland
Near Belfast, we assume, as one of his relatives went down with the Titanic, which was built in that great port city. This geographical connection was, according to Rocky, the inspiration for one of his most celebrated analogies: “nipples like the rivets on the Titanic.” It’s a memorial nobody on the ship could ever have predicted but one Rocky the writer has wanted to use since he was 18.
His identity is still something of a mystery
The only person outside his immediate circle who knows where Rocky Flintstone lives is, apparently, the postman. The neighbours haven’t guessed and even the lawyer who sent him a five-page letter after he applied for copyright on the name, didn’t address it to the right person.
He knows a lot about concrete
Listeners to the final interview will be treated to a fairly lengthy description of the relative composition of concrete on either side of the Atlantic ocean. And isn’t that just the sort of tantalising sexiness we have come to expect from such a writer? On a more lyrical note, however, he likens Alice to the aggregate of the podcast; James as the sand; while Jamie is the cement. Rocky, according to his own account, is the steel. As in reinforced concrete. Unless it’s the other way around and Alice is the steel and Rocky is the, well, rocks. His mind doesn’t seem to be set firm on this.
Rocky is a feminist
He might not know the correct name for the Bechdel test but the self-proclaimed Irish rogue proudly declares himself a feminist, stating: “I really should have been born a woman.” Which is why writing from the perspective of a female protagonist came so easily. Albeit a female protagonist who doesn’t seem to have even the most basic understanding of female anatomy, physiology or the location of the cervix.
This is not the end
The big goal of Belinda Blinked was, as Rocky puts it, “to bring people love and laughter”. Yes, he absolutely does talk like a keyring. And after eight years, the podcast has apparently brought father and son closer together, which is wonderful if a little surprising, when you think about the fact that Jamie has been reading the fevered sexual delinquencies of his father’s imagination to millions of strangers on the internet for more than half a decade. But, it’s not over till it’s over. “It’s not the end,” confirms Rocky, towards the end of the interview. “Something else will happen in a different way.”
He can play the harmonica. Sort of
Australian stuff. French stuff. Primarily Irish stuff. But he still absolutely cannot do the My Dad Wrote A Porno theme tune.
