Porn Drub

It wasn't as though I'd exhausted the archives of my favorite podcasts, but I recently decided to look for a couple of new ones all the same. I collated recommendations from a few different places, and one podcast kept coming up that caught my eye: My Dad Wrote a Porno.

This podcast is the brainchild of Jamie Morton, whose 60-year-old father self-published an erotic novel under the ridiculous pen name of Rocky Flintstone. Where most people might crawl under a rock in shame, Jamie instead invited two quippy friends, James Cooper and Alice Levine, to come riff on the book. In each episode of the podcast, Jamie reads a chapter, and the trio mercilessly shreds it with razor wit.

My Dad Wrote a Porno is consistently hilarious, making me literally laugh out loud whenever I listen to it. There are so many things that go into its comedy alchemy. First, the novel itself, Belinda Blinked, is perfectly awful. It's like The Room of erotic literature, fascinatingly inept on innumerable levels. Even without the running commentary, Jamie's reading of the book would be funny. The fact that he's reading the work of his actual father makes it just that much better (or, depending on your perspective, cringe-inducingly awful).

James and Alice then bring a Mystery Science Theater 3000 element to the mix. No tortured turn of phrase, no awkward simile, no appalling scene premise escapes their notice -- and Belinda Blinked is awash in them. Knowing that Jamie had friends this clever and quick, he had to do a podcast like this. It's obvious.

For me, another key element in the mix is that the trio is British. There's nothing like British sensibilities and a British accent for delivering a withering comedic takedown. My Dad Wrote a Porno would be funny anyway, but there's something here that taps into the heritage of things like Monty Python or The Office that just takes it to the next level.

A second season of the podcast came when "Rocky Flintstone" published a Belinda Blinked sequel. Nevertheless, I've been rationing out episodes, not wanting to burn up my enjoyment of this sublime hilarity too fast. I really can't recommend it highly enough. (Though I hope it's obvious that the content is quite explicit. Atrociously written, and explicit.)

My Dad Wrote a Porno gets an A. It's all that I heard in the recommendations and more.