Victoria Coren Mitchell is everywhere now. You see her presiding over the impossible puzzles of Only Connect with that signature dry wit, or maybe you've watched her take down professional poker players with a stone-cold bluff at a European Poker Tour final table. But before she was the queen of cerebral television and high-stakes gambling, there was Once More with Feeling Victoria Coren—a project that feels like a fever dream from a very specific era of British media.
It’s weird.
People often forget that Coren Mitchell started as a teenage columnist and a wunderkind of the London literary scene. In the late 90s and early 2000s, there was this specific "ladette" culture clashing with high-brow intellectualism, and Victoria sat right in the middle of it. Once More with Feeling wasn't just a book; it was a bizarre, ambitious, and slightly chaotic attempt to cross-pollinate the world of amateur filmmaking with the grueling reality of professional poker and late-night London life. It’s the kind of thing that probably wouldn't get commissioned today because it's too honest about how messy the creative process is.
What was Once More with Feeling actually about?
Most people searching for this today are usually looking for one of two things: the book or the legendary "lost" film project associated with it.
Basically, Victoria Coren and her long-time creative partner Charlie Skelton set out to write a pornographic film.
Wait. Let me rephrase that before it sounds too scandalous.
They wanted to write a good pornographic film. They had this high-concept, slightly ironic idea that they could take a genre notoriously devoid of plot or emotional resonance and inject it with actual character arcs and "feeling." Hence the title. It was a meta-commentary on the industry, a piece of gonzo journalism, and a genuine attempt at screenwriting all rolled into one.
The book, published around 2002, chronicles this journey. It is a chaotic, hilarious, and often cringeworthy look at the underbelly of the adult film industry through the eyes of two posh, intellectual Brits who are clearly out of their depth. They travel to Los Angeles. They meet industry legends. They try to maintain their dignity while discussing "money shots" in boardroom meetings.
It's brilliant. It's also a time capsule.
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If you read it now, you can see the seeds of the persona Victoria would later perfect. She’s observant. She’s slightly detached. She’s incredibly funny without ever trying too hard to be "one of the guys," even though she’s operating in an incredibly male-dominated space.
The Victoria Coren Mitchell Brand: Poker, Puzzles, and Porn?
The reason Once More with Feeling Victoria Coren remains a cult topic is the sheer contrast.
Today, Victoria is a pillar of the BBC. She’s married to David Mitchell. She represents a very specific kind of British respectability—the kind that involves Latin puns and complex sequence solving. Seeing her name attached to a book about the hardcore film industry feels like finding out your favorite librarian used to ride with a biker gang.
But that’s the thing about Victoria. She’s never been one-dimensional.
Her poker career wasn't a hobby; she was the first woman to win an EPT title, and then the first person to win two. She didn't just "play" poker; she lived in the smoke-filled basements of the Victoria Casino (The Vic) for years. Once More with Feeling came out of that same adventurous, slightly gritty curiosity. It wasn't about being shock-jock edgy. It was about exploring a subculture.
Why the film never really happened (the way they planned)
There's a lot of misinformation online about whether the movie actually exists.
Technically, the project evolved into a film called Once More with Feeling (sometimes associated with the title The On-the-Roaders in various production stages), but it didn't become the blockbuster "prestige porn" they initially envisioned. The reality of indie filmmaking hit them hard.
- Funding was a nightmare.
- The industry they were trying to "fix" didn't actually want to be fixed.
- The tone was hard to market. Was it a comedy? A documentary? A drama?
Honestly, the book is better than any film could have been. It captures the disillusionment. It’s a classic "fish out of water" story where the fish realizes the water is actually quite murky and they’d rather be back in a card room in Edgware Road.
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A Masterclass in Gonzo Journalism
If you’re looking for Once More with Feeling because you’re a fan of Victoria’s writing, you’re in for a treat. This was her at her most unfiltered.
She wasn't yet the "national treasure" she is today. She was a young writer trying to make a mark. The prose is jagged. It’s fast. She doesn't hold back on the descriptions of the people she meets—the washed-up directors, the hopeful starlets, and the cynical agents.
She and Skelton (who is a fantastic writer in his own right) have a chemistry on the page that feels like a high-speed car chase. They finish each other's thoughts. They bicker. They share a very specific, dry sense of humor that would later define the tone of Only Connect.
"We weren't trying to be pornographers," she sort of explained in various interviews later. "We were trying to be writers in a world that didn't care about writing."
That’s the core of the book. It’s about the ego of the writer. It’s about the absurdity of trying to bring "art" to a place that is purely transactional.
The Legacy of the Book in 2026
Why does a book from the early 2000s about a failed film project still get searched for?
Because we’ve lost that kind of mid-list, weird, experimental publishing. Everything now is so branded. Everything is a "platform." Once More with Feeling was just two smart people doing something stupid and writing about it beautifully.
It also serves as a reminder of Victoria Coren Mitchell’s range. Before she was explaining the connection between a 14th-century poet and a modern-day emoji, she was navigating the logistics of a film set in the San Fernando Valley. It gives her an edge. When she’s on Taskmaster or QI, and she has that look in her eye like she’s seen it all—it’s because she probably has.
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Common Misconceptions
People often confuse this with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode of the same name.
They are... very different.
One involves vampires singing about their feelings. The other involves Victoria Coren trying to explain a script to a man who hasn't worn a shirt in three days. Both are cult classics in their own right, but if you go into the Victoria Coren book expecting "The Mustard Song," you’re going to be very confused.
Also, don't go looking for the movie on mainstream streaming platforms expecting a standard rom-com. If you can find the footage at all, it’s a gritty, lo-fi relic of a time when digital video was just starting to change how movies were made. It’s an artifact.
How to find "Once More with Feeling" Today
Finding a physical copy of the book can actually be a bit of a hunt. It wasn't a Harry Potter-level bestseller, so you’re looking at second-hand shops, eBay, or the dark corners of Amazon’s used section.
It’s worth the hunt.
If you want to understand the modern British media landscape, you have to understand the people who built it. Victoria Coren Mitchell is a cornerstone of that landscape. Once More with Feeling is her "lost" origin story. It’s the bridge between her childhood as a prodigy and her adulthood as a polymath.
Actionable Steps for the Curious Reader
If you're genuinely interested in diving into this specific chapter of Victoria's career, don't just stop at a Google search.
- Track down the book first: Look for the 2002 edition published by Fourth Estate. The cover usually features Victoria and Charlie looking suitably exhausted.
- Watch the early poker documentaries: To get the context of where her head was at during this time, find the Late Night Poker archives. It captures the same atmosphere.
- Read her old columns: If you can access the Observer or Guardian archives from the early 2000s, her writing there provides the perfect backdrop to the chaos of the book.
- Compare it to "For Richer, For Poorer": This was her later memoir about poker. Reading them back-to-back shows an incredible evolution in her voice—moving from the frantic energy of Once More with Feeling to the more soulful, introspective tone of her poker years.
Victoria Coren Mitchell didn't become the smartest person on TV by accident. She did it by being willing to go anywhere—even into the heart of a failing film production—just to see what would happen. That’s the real lesson of Once More with Feeling. It’s not about the "adult" industry. It’s about the courage to be interested in everything, no matter how weird it gets.