EVERYTHING changes when you enter the Jillyverse. Everything is warmer somehow, jollier, lovelier, more heavenly. It begins the moment I step out of my taxi at the Chantry, Jilly Cooper’s home of 40 years in Bisley, Gloucestershire.
Jilly is there to greet me on the porch: knowing smile, dancing blue eyes, her distinctive white-blonde mane as fluffy as ever, wearing a thick woollen sweater with an embroidered greyhound motif. She’s 86 now and just a tad frail, but she’s still a masterful hostess, curious and lively.
It’s a warm afternoon but the fire in Jilly’s sitting room is roaring. There’s a glass of chilled champagne and some smoked salmon blinis waiting for me. And a barrage of compliments.
“You’ve got great eyebrows, they’re positively Byronic,” she tells me, somewhat generously.
“Umm, thank you,” I stutter.
“Oh, I love Byron, wasn’t he heaven?” Jilly asks.
And we’re off. I’ve been seduced within 90 seconds.
We walk through a home full of dogs: wooden dogs, portraits of dogs, woven dog cushions, dog-eared copies of Dogs Today magazine. There are no live dogs because “darling Bluebell”, her greyhound, died a couple of years ago.
She’s been planning to adopt another rescue dog but had to do “15 months” of rewrites on her latest novel, Tackle!, which is what I’m here to discuss.
To be clear, I’m absolutely not here to discuss Rivals, the upcoming, star-studded, eight-part Disney+ adaptation of her classic novel, with Aidan Turner (“lovely”), David Tennant (“heaven”) and Danny Dyer (“they’re all heaven”). In fact, there’s a note on the table to remind her that Disney wants her to keep uncharacteristically shtoom.
