Torrential rain is thudding down on Jilly Cooper's enchanting house – her medieval chantry in Gloucestershire, aka Rutshire in her Rutshire Chronicles series of novels. And we are giggling away about sex.
‘There's not nearly as much sex as there was before,’ she says of Tackle!, her new novel about football. ‘The publishers thought there might be some more.’
Warming to the sex theme, Jilly says, ‘I've forgotten how to do it. Writers ought to write about what they know. I couldn't go to football during the pandemic, when I was writing it. And, at 86, I don't leap up and down any more.’
Jilly fans, don't despair! There's still plenty of sex roiling away in Jilly's tale of her hero Rupert Campbell-Black taking over an ailing local football team, Searston Rovers.
Campbell-Black is still the best-looking man in England. His wife, Taggie, is being treated for cancer. Enter the younger generation, in the form of their daughter, Bianca, and her ace striker boyfriend, Feral Jackson. The rutting temperature is raised by a whole first XI of hunks and their sex-crazed WAGs.
‘Footballers must have lots of sex,’ says Jilly.
