The Wolf Who Couldn't Help Himself 🐺🍽️

Winston Wolf is the most feared food critic on Wibbleton Way. One bad review from him and a restaurant can expect flames, floods, or complete structural failure by the end of the week. Winston does not write these reviews lightly. He is precise, serious, and absolutely convinced that terrible cooking should never be allowed to continue unchallenged.

Then three wildly enthusiastic pigs open three restaurants on the same street at the same time.

Winston can smell trouble before he even opens the menus. He can also smell burnt gravy, undercooked pastry, and something that might be soup but could equally be an incident waiting to happen. The restaurants are called Straw Cuisine, Stick Bistro, and The Brick Oven, which should have been Winston's first warning that these pigs have more enthusiasm than actual cooking ability.

At first, Winston plans to do what any sensible food critic wolf would do. Write a review. Give them one star. Walk away. Let the pigs learn from their mistakes in their own time like responsible adults. Job done. Problem solved.

But then he tastes the food. And it is spectacularly, impressively, almost artistically awful. The sort of bad that makes you wonder how someone can put ingredients together in exactly the wrong order and still produce something that technically qualifies as a meal. Winston writes his review. The restaurant does not improve. Winston writes another review. The pigs smile, nod enthusiastically, and continue serving food that should come with a warning label.

And that is when something inside Winston snaps. Because when you know how things should be done, it is surprisingly difficult to watch other people do them so badly, especially when those people are cheerful about their incompetence and seem entirely unbothered by the fact that their mashed potato has the texture of wallpaper paste.

Winston starts getting involved. Just small suggestions at first. Tiny helpful comments about seasoning and cooking times. But helpful comments turn into longer explanations. Longer explanations turn into demonstrations. Demonstrations turn into Winston standing in someone else's kitchen, wearing an apron, running three restaurants simultaneously because apparently nobody else is capable of doing it properly.

The comedy builds as Winston tries and fails to stop interfering, the pigs keep cheerfully accepting his help without actually learning anything, and the whole situation spirals into something ridiculous. There are menus that should not exist. There are meals that behave like they are alive. There is a wolf who desperately wants to walk away but cannot seem to stop himself from fixing everything.

This story twists a familiar fairy tale into something deliciously odd and recognisable. It is for kids who like a bit of gentle menace without anything truly nasty, and for parents who want wholesome humour with bite that still lands warm. Children will enjoy the silly food disasters and the increasingly frantic wolf. Grown ups will recognise the feeling of trying to fix someone else's mess and somehow making it bigger.

Perfect for family listening when you want audio stories for children that feel clever, a kids storytelling podcast episode that makes everyone smile, or at bedtime when you want funny bedtime stories for kids that build laughs then settle into something softer. The story escalates beautifully, then lands in a place that feels safe enough for a calming bedtime story.

Mr Morton's Barmy Book of Bonkers Bits is wholesome family storytelling with a bonkers twist. Performance driven, kind hearted, and never mean.

Episode length: approximately 18 minutes
Ages: 4 to 400
Best enjoyed: bedtime, car journeys, after school wind down

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