My Dad Wrote a Porno on tour: Live version of the hit podcast is 'like watching Ron, Harry and Hermione talking about pornography'

“You’re just like Ron, Harry and Hermione talking about pornography.” That was the American view on the very British hit podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno – a live version of which has just been taking the States by storm.

“And basically we are,” Jamie Morton, one of the presenters, explains. “That’s a good description of it.”

Being the Harry Potter of bad sex might explain why this podcast – in which three Brits read aloud and generally mock Morton’s dad’s hilariously badly-written attempts at erotic fiction – has won such a cult following right around the world. “The perception of Brits is that they’re buttoned-up, really apologetic, shy, reserved people. And suddenly we’re there talking about sex,” says Morton.

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The podcast has garnered over 100 million global downloads, as well as a spinoff book. The live show now heads to Europe, with the UK leg of the tour starting this week. And it includes a performance at the actual Royal Albert Hall; with an audience of over 5,000 people, it’s thought to be the largest ever podcast gig.

So how did Belinda Blinked; 1 A Modern Story Of Sex, Erotica And Passion. How The Sexiest Sales Girl In Business Earns Her Huge Bonus By Being The Best At Removing Her High Heels (yes, that is the book’s title) by Rocky Flintstone become the source material of one of today’s most successful podcasts?

“It all started with my dad, who was newly retired and wanted to do something to keep his mind active,” Morton says, as we chat in a midday-empty heavy metal bar away from the tourist hubbub of Camden’s main strip, in north London. “And he’d heard about the success of EL James with Fifty Shades of Grey, which he actually calls Fifty Colours of Grey. And he thought, well if she can do it, I can definitely do it. Turns out he can’t.”

Not so long after, Morton received the first three chapters of what quickly became clear was a (very badly written) erotic novel in his inbox.

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“When a situation presents itself like this you are confronted with two avenues. Like, which pill do you take in The Matrix. Do you suppress it and pretend it never happened and let it eat you up inside and you become a really sad, depressed individual? Or do you just fully accept it and read it to the world?”

As anyone who has been swept up in this unlikely cultural phenomenon will know, it was the latter avenue that Morton took.

He starting by clearing out a “posh Hampstead pub” by uttering phrases like “her vaginal lids popped open” over dinner to a table full of university friends. He then developed the line-by-line reading – with interruptions, jokes, and a lot of laughter – that would become the podcast, sat around the kitchen table with his friends James Cooper and Alice Levine.

Three series later, and somehow the squirm-inducing hilarity of Morton reading his dad’s so wholly un-sexy telling of the sexual escapades of Belinda Blinked has only gathered momentum (his father, meanwhile, obligingly churns out more and more books). But what’s the secret to keeping it sounding fresh?

“In one word: editing,” Morton replies without hesitation.

“We record for two hours normally at least, throwing in as many jokes as possible,” Cooper continues. “Alice and I are genuinely hearing it as we record it. Jamie will have read [the extract from the novel] on the day so he can get his head around the grammar. That’s how we make it sound fresh and funny because most of the time we’re making shit jokes and Jamie’s just making sure the good jokes stay in.”

In the time they have developed their podcast, the game has been raised in the genre; expectations are now for something a little more polished. Thankfully, Levine is an experienced radio DJ and presenter, and with Morton’s editing and Cooper’s producing skills, the trio are able to keep their product up to scratch.

“I love crafting the episodes, trimming and sculpting them,” Morton says. “Because I always think, if you’re asking complete strangers to spend 40 minutes of their day listening to something you’ve made, you owe them the best 40 minutes that you can produce. You can’t just put anything up there and expect people to come back and listen every week.”

Crucially, though, the podcast’s fame hasn’t led to a loss of authenticity. The three friends have turned down chances to record in slick studios, instead continuing to religiously record in one of their flats with the £50 mics they started with – and often a bottle of wine close by.

“Jamie’s been nominated for a Bafta, but we still use GarageBand and really cheap microphones. It’s kind of embarrassing how ramshackle the operation is,” Morton says with a laugh. But the low-fi set up somehow adds to the charm of the series.

Incredibly, given our toxic social media age, the podcast has carved out an almost uniquely positive and good-willed following from all corners of the internet, and has won high-profile fans from Elijah Wood to Daisy Ridley.

Even more improbably, perhaps, they’ve also heard from fans that the podcast has genuinely helped them: “We’ve had feedback from listeners who talk about sex with their friends through the podcast and it opens up that dialogue,” Morton tells me. “And [between] parents and their children.” They’ve even been credited with helping people lose their virginity: “some people were so anxious and nervous about having sex, then realised through the show, ‘oh sex is fun and you can laugh at it, it’s not this big scary thing’.”

The team have also worked hard to make something new for the tour. “We try to make it more of a show than just a live podcast,” Cooper explains. “Alice does a presentation about the vagina. There’s audience participation: we get people up on stage to recreate scenes to see if you can actually do what the books say. Spoiler alert: you can’t.”

And the live performance is absolutely not just for die-hard podcasters, they insist. “A lot of people who come as virgins – Belinda Blinked virgins, that is – become converts. They’ll listen to the podcast after coming to the live show,” Morton says. “So it kind of works both ways, which was always our ambition.”

With the downloads still racking up, the tour underway, a fourth season on the horizon, and even a film adaptation in development – where do they go from here?

“At the end of each series we think about whether we should do another,” says Cooper. “If something doesn’t feel right we just won’t do it. We have to do right by Belinda, basically.”

Morton adds that his dad certainly hasn’t shown signs of slowing down: “He’s on his eighth book, I think. He’s a man inspired and possessed. In equal measures.”

What about a feature-length porn film based on the book? “Never say never,” replies Cooper with a grin. “We actually did get approached by a porn company to make a scene of Belinda Blinked. They’ve obviously not listened to the podcast – there’s no way anyone would want to watch that in any real way…”

My Dad Wrote A Porno is on tour until 3 September (mydadwroteaporno.com)