Author Rocky Flintstone, the inspiration behind My Dad Wrote A Porno, has credited the success of the podcast to the “supreme confidence” of its hosts, Jamie Morton, Alicie Levine, and James Cooper.
“You have to have supreme confidence in yourself. There's no doubt about it. And you guys have, because you do other things outside of this podcast, which you have to stick your neck above the parapet and do every day of your lives. So it's all about being confident in what you do now.”
Flintstone is the creator of the Belinda Blinked series of erotic novels, with the podcast based on Morton - his son - reading them aloud to his co-hosts. Speaking on the final episode of the popular show, which is ending after more than eight years, Flintstone also revealed that the podcast’s popularity has driven significant sales for his books.
“None of them were doing anything great,” he said. “I mean, we were selling three or four times a year. Once Belinda Blinked came along, and then you guys did the podcast, we started to sell eight a week.”
Having found this success from the podcast in his 60s, his advice to people who think their time has passed is to achieve small goals which eventually lead to bigger ones.
“You might decide you buy your horse, then you’ve got to buy a little field for it to live in,” he said, “so you buy a little field and then you say ‘Oh, I enjoy this, I’ll do a podcast on riding horses in my field and become a multimillion dollar YouTuber.”
In the finale, Flintstone also revealed numerous insights and behind the scenes stories about the podcast and his writing process for the Belinda Blinked series, including that some of the content can be considered autobiographical, his use of sexual vocabulary and killing off characters in the plot, and where his pen name was derived from - a combination of his love of The Flintstones and his background in geology.
“One of the things about the podcast coming to a conclusion is you can’t keep going forever,” said Flintstone. “ It's a fantastic time to bring the podcast to an end because Belinda has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. She is now in charge of this mega maniac business operation.”
He also revealed that while the podcast may be coming to an end, he will continue to publish new books in the series.
“...I don’t want the fandom to think that’s the end, it's not the end, it's something else will happen in a slightly different way and whilst we may not release the podcast anymore, because it’s a really good place to end, I don’t see any reason why I should stop doing what I do.”
The My Dad Wrote a Porno team made the announcement to end their podcast on 12 November after a successful run which included amassing over 430m downloads globally, releasing an HBO comedy special, and completing two sold-out world tours of their live show.
Co-hosts Morton, Levine, and Cooper sat down with PodPod to discuss what brought them to the decision to end the show and what it was like recording the last ever episodes, as well as recording with Flintstone himself.
“It was so nice for me actually, to kind of share the microphone with my dad and for the listeners as well to kind of hear how much he loves this brand… because I think there's perhaps a misconception that he's not on board or that it’s mean to him,” Morton told PodPod. “It couldn't be further from the truth, my dad loves it, he loves James' analysis, and he loves the fact that we read them constantly.”
“He was so hyped to do it as well, like, we had never seen him in that mood,” added Levine. “...he really was like, I've got to do this properly, that this is really important, and it was just very sweet and touching. And I think because we knew as well, that this was the last thing that we would record, it just had a really special feeling around it.”
