Podcast / My Dad Wrote a Porno

"Erotic literature."^note From left to right, James Cooper, Jamie Morton, and Alice Levine.

Alice: Jamie, why are we here?
Jamie: We're here because my dad's written a porno.
James: Your dad's written a porno?

— The exchange at the beginning of each episode of Book 1, right after the Content Warning.

When Jamie Morton's 60-something father handed him a manuscript that he'd been working on, Jamie was happy to read and review it. That is, until he realized two things:

1. It was erotica.
2. It was really bad erotica.

After reading it at a Christmas party, Jamie ended up looping in his colleague James Cooper and Radio 1 DJ Alice Levine to provide discourse on "Rocky Flintstone"'s erotic masterpiece, Belinda Blinked. Commentary on strange sexual encounters, stranger sexual metaphors, and kink as interpreted at 60-degree angles ensued. Together, these three brave readers pore over the continuing sexual adventures of Belinda, as she gets ahead in the high-stakes world of pots and pans sales through sex mazes, erotic tombolas, riding gear, and business trips to Amsterdam. The podcast came to a close in December 2022, following six books and a two-chapter finale.

An HBO special aired in May 2019.

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This podcast contains examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: Belinda Blumenthal and Giselle Sylvester née Maarschalkerweerd de Klotz work alongside people like Ken Dewsbury, Bella Ridley, and Peter Rouse. The hosts even comment on this in the first episode.
• Ambiguous Time Period:
  • Ostensibly set during The '80s, but various elements (such as the O2 Arena, or as Rocky calls it, the "Millennium Dome Building") suggest it's set anytime between The '70s and The New '10s.
  • Completely goes out the window in Book 3, with references to Facebook, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad. This is despite the fact that East Berlin is apparently still around.
  • Goes further out the window when, during Belinda's near death experience, she spots Dick Van Dyke in heaven. Alice and James immediately burst out laughing, noting that he is very much alive.
  • The Footnotes episode “Understanding the Timeline” points out many of the (numerous) inconsistencies, among them the fact that Belinda has only been employed at Steele’s for a couple of months, which is an absurdly short time for the events of the series to have occurred.
• Anatomically Impossible Sex: James and Alice both have audible reactions to a mention of somebody grabbing Belinda's "cervix." Later, Alice gives a lengthy explanation of where the cervix is in the female anatomy, as well as what purpose it serves.
  • It gets worse when one of Belinda's many lovers penetrates to one of her ovaries.
  • In "Zachariah's Magic Wand" from Book 4, the trio can't even piece together what's supposed to be happening, but they're pretty sure it's impossible. It involves a fictional drug called a Tamarack Flute, and the smoke from that drug being used in various ways.
• Artistic License – History:
  • The hosts freak out when Rocky describes The Duchess's nipples as "3 inches long, the same length as the rivets that so famously held the Titanic together." Later, they point out that said rivets were actually the size of a kitchen table.
  • The series' 80s setting is also inconsistent; the 02 Arena (originally dubbed the Millennium Dome, having opened in 2000) is set to feature and Linkedin is mentioned.
  • And while it hasn't been confirmed, Ronald and Nancy Reagan apparently provide the characters with tickets to a football game.
  • Some details are inconsistent with the story being set either in the modern day or in the 80s. Notably, Zimbabwe is still called Rhodesia, and Russia apparently still has a nobility - which it hasn't had since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War. Even more confusingly, St. Petersburg is still called Leningrad, which results in one character holding the rather oxymoronic title of the "Countess of Leningrad".
  • Berlin is still split between East and West Berlin.
  • Doctor Stud also mentions having seen the Venus de Milo in Italy twenty years ago, despite the fact that it's been housed in the Louvre since the 1880s.
• Artistic License – Medicine: Aside from the obvious fact that doctors usually don’t have sex with random patients:
  • There is no surgery that can make a man’s penis enormously big and capable of producing blue semen. ^note For that matter, semen isn’t even produced in the penis. The seminal fluid is made in the seminal vesicles, the prostate, and the bulbourethral glands, and sperm cells are made in the testicles.
  • It’s unlikely that a bombing large enough to leave a crater in the asphalt would injure Bella and Bella alone. It’s even more unlikely that Bella would slip into a Convenient Coma, stay on the verge of death for a week, then wake up randomly upon detecting Belinda and Dr. Stud having sex in her room. And regarding Dr. Stud, what doctor specializes exclusively in the fields of comas and sex?
• Ask a Stupid Question...: In chapter 4 of book 1, Belinda remarks that the wet ground beneath her feet would soon form a mud patch, leading to this exchange between the hosts:
  Alice: What's a mud patch?
  Jamie: A patch of mud, Alice.
• Attractiveness Discrimination: Enforced by the narrative. If the main characters consider someone to be unattractive, there's a high chance that that person will be evil.
• Auto Erotica: Belinda and the Dutchess have sex in a car. It doesn't end well—Belinda crashes the car—but it's okay, because she immediately meets and has sex with an attractive doctor.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Mistress Sweetjuice, a fat dominatrix in Book 4 who Belinda is incredibly attracted to.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Everything to do with Jim Sterling shows this trope is in full effect. In his first appearance, his micropenis makes for a terrible experience when he has sex with Belinda. When he gets his penis transplant, Belinda finds their sex much more enjoyable.
• Black Bra and Panties: Specifically thongs. Every character inexplicably wears a black thong all the time.
• Bland-Name Product: Rocky frequently substitutes made-up brands for real ones. Consequently, Special K becomes Special Jay, and a Kit Kat Chunky becomes a Tit Tat Crunchy.
• Body Horror: Jim Sterling's giant cock transplant is treated like it. For one thing, the skin sloughs off as Belinda manipulates it, apparently as a perfectly normal part of the surgery. Belinda, meanwhile, is not pleased by the idea of getting loose cock skin inside her... and even considers the possibility that the material is so potent, she could grow a giant cock of her own. The hosts, of course, are horrified.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Rocky likes to bring back characters, but there have been some exceptions. The hosts frequently joke about the character "Bill from HR", who appears at Belinda's job interview in the first chapter of the first book but drops off the face of the earth afterwards. Also, Dave Wilcox, Steeles' Western RSM, who is introduced along with the other RSMs but is quickly phased into the background and entirely absent in the RSM meeting in book 4.
• Comatose Canary: Bella can feel Belinda and Dr. Stud have sex despite the fact that she's comatose.
• Content Warning: The beginning of each episode features one of the three hosts stating "The following podcast contains adult themes, sexual content, and strong language. Basically, all the good stuff."
• Continuity Cavalcade: Book 4 includes a lot of returning characters from previous books, leading Alice to mock it (in song) as "such a best-of". Most of them appear as guests at Tony and Giselle's wedding, despite many of them having had little to no established connection with them previously.
• Conveniently Common Kink: Everyone in the book wears black thongs under their clothes, be they wearing equestrian dressage or business suits. Generally, it's safe to assume that if a kinky thing is introduced, every character in the room will be totally okay with it no matter how absurd or anatomically impossible it seems.
• Cool Horse: The Ducthess's "soul sister stallion," Toffee Apple Chew (also known as "Taccy.")
• Covered in Gunge: While in the garden maze, Belinda getting covered in mud during sex. In particular, this is invoked when Peter Rouse rubs mud on her to form magical sigils.
• Distracted by the Sexy: All of Bisch's henchmen. Once Belinda takes off her shirt, they forget what they're supposed to be doing and immediately get knocked out by the sleeping drought she has hidden in her bra.
• Dirty Old Woman: The Duchess and Countess Zara, both of whom lead very wild sexual lives with much younger partners.
• Do You Want to Copulate?: Belinda greets almost everyone she sees by having sex with them, even if she's never even met them before.
• Eagle Land: The most prominent American character, Jim Sterling, is an ugly slob prone to wearing cowboy hats.
• Erotic Eating: Every scene featuring the feeder fetishist domme, Mistress Sweetjuice. Specifically, Belinda licking room-temperature whipping cream off of her.
• Everyone Is Bi: Or rather, every woman. No woman in the series ever seems to spare a second thought to the gender of their sexual partners. The same is not true of the men, who seem to be universally straight, aside from one textual reference that places Agent Spooner as Ambiguously Bi.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: Of course. Nearly every episode features some sort of sexual activity.
• Fan Disservice: None of the sex in this series is appealing, because it is so bizarre and poorly written.
• Feng Schwing: Many locations are like this, including Steele's Leather Room (a combination sex den, meeting room, and secret headquarters for the Confidential Order of Cookware Knights.) The Dutchess also has an entire room covered in sex toys.
• Freud Was Right: Everyone thinks about sex all the time. Even confidential meetings are conducted in rooms that are basically sex dungeons, and having sex with random people is apparently a normal and expected part of selling kitchenware. If the characters are doing anything, expect that thing to be compared to sex in some way (unless they're actually having sex, in which case sexual acts and objects will be referred to exclusively in absurd metaphors and similes that don't make any sense; i.e. "her breasts hung freely, like pomegranates.")
• Friends with Benefits: Belinda has had sex with nearly all of her friends at some point.
• Fun with Acronyms: In book 4, Belinda forms the Confidential Order of Cookware Knights.
  Jamie: Fuckin' hell, Dad....
• Funetik Aksent: Seemingly a specialty of Rocky's. Amongst others, Jamie notes that Jim Stirling and Andy Millstone say 'Belinder' and 'Belindaaa' respectively.
• Genre Shift: The fourth and fifth books shift away from the "business and leadership" aspects of the series to something more akin to an attempt at an erotic spy thriller, complete with copious nods to James Bond.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Belinda has plenty of sex with women in the series, and this is played for titillation of the books' intended audience of men who are attracted to women.
• Going Commando: Belinda does this from time to time, such as the meeting with Andy Millstone in Yorkshire, although Rocky mistakenly calls it 'bareback'. Belinda's acting coach at RADS, Geremimah St Frostfirst, implies that all the best actresses don't wear knickers.
  Alice: Bareback! He means bare bum!
• Hammerspace: Belinda somehow manages to sneak in and store thousands of woks under all the seats at the "Millenium Dome Building" to reveal during her speech.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Appears in some rather strange ways, such as the room at Belinda's office building that is decorated with nothing but fine leather tiles... and a drinks cart.
• Heroic Seductress: Belinda in the fourth and fifth books, in which she saves Steele's Pots and Pans from their evil competitor Herr Bisch. Naturally, she does this by having near-constant sex with everyone she meets, even when it's totally irrelevant and wouldn't help her in any way.
• Hospital Hottie: Dr. Veronica Stud, who specializes in the medical fields of "comas" and "sex."
• Idealized Sex: Whether it happens in a mucky maze or a sink, Belinda's encounters will almost always be marvellous for her.
• IKEA Erotica: Rocky has a tendency to either skip right to the business or focus on the minutia of foreplay.
• Informed Attribute: Belinda is supposedly a skilled businesswoman who's drastically increased Steele's profits since she was hired... but all she ever does is have sex with people and hand out enormous amounts of woks for free.
• Instant Seduction: Belinda and the rest of the Glee Team can convince virtually anyone to have sex with them.
• Intimate Healing: A strange example; Bella is awakened from her coma when Dr. Stud and Belinda have sex pretty much on top her. It's implied that her brain damage was cured by a sheer desire to join them.
• Invulnerable Horses: When the bomb goes off at Steele's, several humans are injured, but Toffee Apple Chew remains totally unharmed.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: The 2020 Christmas special takes this format, called 'It's a Blinking Life'. After wishing she was dead, Belinda discovers that Bisch has bought out Steele's, the Pentra is now a 'porn-free environment', Peter and Christina Rouse are struggling with infertility, Bella died in the bomb blast that ended Book Four, and the Duchess was stripped of her titles and sent to live on a council estate.^note At no point does Belinda actually do anything to prevent most of these events from happening, and it’s not clear how her presence prevents Peter and Christina from struggling with infertility. Jamie mentions that the original film is a Flintstone family favourite at Christmas.
• Killed Off for Real: At the end of book 5, George stabs Spooner to death during the climactic clink fight.
  • He comes back in the 2020 Christmas special as a 'friend angel', now called 'Sp00ner'.
• Mile-High Club: Happens to Belinda three times, with the same co-pilot, on flights from Amsterdam to London and from London to Texas. The second time, it's on a plane with private bedrooms. The third time, the sex happens in the cockpit, and in their fumbling they manage to fly a huge passenger jet straight upwards^note In reality, doing so would almost certainly lead to a fatal stall.
• The Mole: The finale of Book 3 reveals that Bisch have planted one within Steele's: the Special One. The finale of Book 4 reveals that it's Giselle.
• Nature Abhors a Virgin: Upon encountering an inexperienced young man, Belinda and the Glee Team take it upon themselves to "fix" the situation.
• The Nudifier: Spooner has a laser cufflink that he uses to cut Belinda's dress off. How it doesn't damage her skin is anyone's guess, especially since it cuts the clothing on her back while aimed at the front of her body.
• Oh, My Gods!: The characters (usually Belinda) frequently swear "by the Norse gods", in those words. No, the characters are not pagan, nor from a Nordic country. Nevermind the strangeness of referring to the gods you swear by in such a manner, kind of like swearing by the Christian God as "the Hebrew god".
  • Remarkably, God Himself appears as a character in chapter 4.01.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There's Jim Thompson and Jim Sterling, and James Spooner and Sir James Godwin. If you factor in the fact that Jim is just a diminutive of James, there's four characters with the same name. And then there's the fact that the male hosts are called Jamie and James...
  • There's also the RSM Paddy O'Hamlyn and Paddy the Barman.
• Out with a Bang: Finally, inevitably happens in Book 5, when Giselle accidentally suffocates Slintz with her vagina in an attempt at torture. Turns out to be a subversion, however, since he actually took a cyanide pill.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: A big part of the series' humour, naturally. That said, it's often downplayed more than not, with Jamie mostly having visceral reactions when his father's writing really crosses the line. In season four, he goes into a long denial over the fact that his father wrote a rimming scene. Alice and James spend the rest of the season trying to get Jamie to admit that "[his] dad knows about anal play."
• Professionals Do It on Desks: In the appropriately titled chapter, "The Dutchman's Leather Desk."
• Public Exposure: Every character does this at least once. In a maze, in Steele's offices, in the Ritz, in a plane, the list goes on.
• Red Herring: With regards to the Special One, Rocky does this very heavy-handedly in the fourth book with Maeve, the receptionist. It seems that she can't do anything without it being labelled "shifty" or "suspicious." And she seems to be a borderline Ethnic Scrappy in-universe, with everybody disliking her seemingly just because she's Irish.
• Revenge Myopia: Bisch holds a grudge against the West in general for his treatment by the British secret services. Thus he will exact his retribution... upon a pots and pans company, using a former member of those British secret services as an accomplice.
• Serious Business: The pots and pans trade is treated with much more seriousness than one might assume, given that there's a sales conference being held in the O2 Arena (which, as the hosts point out, is the kind of place where you'd go to see Adele).
  • There's also the visit to Peter Rouse's offices in Amsterdam, where the secretary tells Belinda that their building regularly receives terrorist threats.
  • And then it turns out that Steele's contains personnel who deal with information flow and the company is locked in a struggle with Bisch Hardware... who have a spy inside the company.
  • And then it turns out the friggin' CIA are involved somehow...
• Sexier Alter Ego: Belinda Blumenthal's spy alter ego Belinda Smith (nicknamed "Smiffy") is portrayed as if she's this. She really isn't that different from normal Belinda, though.
• Sex Is Good: Unsurprisingly, played straight. Almost every dalliance Belinda has leads to a deal or new market opening up, however unplanned or unlikely the encounter is, and the sex is almost always marvellous.
  • The aftermath of the Maze reveals that Steele's have deliberately pushed this strategy, having female employees have sex with prospective clients in order to sell them pots and pans.
• Sex for Services: The female employees of Steele's Pots and Pans sleep with potential customers on the regular in order to get them to buy their kitchenware. This is, apparently, a surprisingly effective tactic; despite the fact that Belinda gave out incredibly massive amount of woks for free, the company's sales and revenue have skyrocketed since she was hired.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: No character we've seen so far has any qualms about stripping naked and having sex whenever, even when they're surrounded by crowds, on a dangerous spy mission, or actively fighting an enemy. In one chapter, Belinda and several other rich, powerful people walk out of a building totally naked, and nobody seems to care that paparazzi are waiting outside to photograph them.
• Shoe Phone: Being an expy of Sean Connery-era James Bond, Spooner has a few of these, most of which the hosts find utterly ridiculous. In addition to his clothes-destroying laser cufflink, he also has a leather charm bracelet that somehow turns into a pair of binoculars with a packet of wet wipes inside.
• Skewed Priorities: At the end of Book 4, Giselle has escaped out the window while carrying Professor Slintz. Rather than, say, chase after her immediately, Spooner and Belinda wallow in pity for a bit before Belinda gives Spooner a blowjob.
• Sleeping Their Way to the Top: Bella is randomly promoted to a key accounts manager after she has sex with a bunch of people, even though she behaves like a Valley Girl ditz. Then again, this is Steele's, so maybe Sleeping Their Way to the Top is just expected.
• Somewhere, an Equestrian Is Crying: Everything surrounding Toffee Apple Chew. The Dutchess rides her to random events like how a regular person would drive a car. And she's also called a "soul sister stallion" (note that a stallion is a male horse.)
• The Spymaster: Herr Bisch conducts his business affairs just as he did his former career, spying for the Communist government of East Germany.
• Teeny Weenie: The hosts are repulsed yet enthralled by a section where Belinda makes love to Jim Sterling, an American with a micropenis (which they describe as a "vole"). It doesn't last, though — he later has a surgery that replaces it with a gigantic "monster dick".
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Belinda adores turkey sandwiches, gin and tonics, and chardonnay, especially Chilean or Australian chardonnay.
  • The first thing Bella asked for upon waking from a coma was a “Mc Massive Meal Deal with extra cheese string salsa.” What exactly that is is anyone’s guess.
• Tuxedo and Martini: Jamie plays James Spooner as an Expy of James Bond.
• Unexplained Recovery:
  • After the bombing, Belinda briefly dies, entering Heaven for a long enough time to see various dead celebrities and acquaintances. Then she miraculously recovers and walks away perfectly fine. After dying.
  • The bomb blast likewise leaves Bella comatose, and she’s hospitalized and unconscious for at least a week after the attack. But when she somehow detects Belinda and her doctor having sex in her hospital room, she immediately wakes up and is well enough to be discharged within minutes.
  • Throughout all of the books, characters consume ludicrous amounts of alcohol, but recover from the resulting intoxication and hangovers with ease no matter how much they drink.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Sir James almost fires Belinda at the end of Book 6 for asking for her old position back. He justifies this by saying that Belinda missed valuable trading time in her absence, ignoring the fact that Belinda had just saved Steels, had brought been an exemplary (for Steels) employee thus far, and that her absence was barely 3 days whilst acting on behalf of COCK which was under his orders,let alone that she was taken hostage.
• Unusual Euphemism: “Gentleman woof” for a fart. It’s even the name of the chapter.
• Upper-Class Equestrian: The Duchess has a horse named Toffee Apple Chew, which she decides to ride to C.O.C.K. meetings for some reason. One of her friends' daughters is also involved in equestrian sports, but she doesn't seem very good at them (coming in eighth place.)
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: An absolutely egregious example at the end of book 4, where the Special One jumps out of the window right in front of Belinda and Spooner while carrying another person, but rather than run after her, Belinda simply gives up and gives Spooner a blowjob.
• Wham Episode: The end of Book 4.
  • The Special One is revealed... and it's Giselle.
  • Belinda brings all her trusted coworkers, friends, and allies together to form a society that will countermand whatever Bish has planned... and then a car bomb goes off in Tony's Jag as they leave the building, with Belinda not knowing who's dead and who's alive.
  • And then there's the end of Book 5: Giselle goes back over to the side of good, Spooner dies, Belinda is dragged away by Herr Bish, and a heretofore unmentioned birthmark of Belinda's body proves that she and Herr Bish are family.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Jamie's voicework produces this effect in both James and Alice and the audience alike. Special highlights are Petra (German, allegedly), Helga (Dutch, though she's actually American) and Marco Orriguez (Brazillian with a Boston twang).
  • Even applies to George Sylvester, who speaks with a Manchester accent. Jamie is originally from Manchester.
  Alice: It's amazing that you can be so inaccurate at the accent from where you're from.
• You Can Leave Your Hat On: In the first Christmas special, the Steele's Pots and Pans office Christmas party features a strip show. The strippers are Steele's employees Belinda, Bella, and Giselle, as well as four sisters called the Hunts girls who are professional strippers.

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