Even with the moustaches and the wandering hands, I think I want to live in Jilly's world.

Jilly Cooper’s Rivals (and other things I have enjoyed recently).

Is there any single writer who has had such a profound impact on the adolescent girls of the 70s and 80s as Jilly Cooper? Aside from the crushing, slow dawning disappointment that not all men were in fact able to bat bread rolls across dining tables with their appendage, as could her iconic creation Rupert Campbell Black, her stories filled us with the idea that sex could be fun, that women were as equally likely to be filled with lust as men, and yes, while a lot of her books contain scenes and ideas that subsequent generations might consider not just un-politically correct, but possibly appalling in their portrayals of sexual dynamics, there are also lots of us who identified strongly with the slightly grubby, frequently drunken but ultimately joyful worlds that she created, most of all within the millions-selling blockbusters Riders and Rivals. These two books sat on almost every house’s bookshelves for decades, the white jodhpur-clad bottom with a male hand on it a thrilling summation of what lay inside.

Jilly’s heroines do not succumb to desire with the serious, lip-biting flutterings of Fifty Shades, with its bondage gear and humourless billionaires in helicopters. They are often a bit slatternly and chaotic and more likely to ogle someone unsuitable over a drunken dinner table and end up playing naked tennis with them, accompanied by screams of laughter. I know which one I’d rather my daughter thought of as appealing.

I’m writing this because last Friday I was lucky enough to be invited to a screening at BAFTA of the first two episodes of the television adaptation of Rivals, the first televisual attempt at Jilly’s work since the 1980s (and we’ll draw a veil over that last one). I’ll admit when I heard Rivals was being adapted I was not particularly excited. Jilly’s books are unabashedly sexy, witty, and silly, probably deeply unfashionable in today’s climate, and as Dominic Treadwell-Collins the man behind the adaptation said, it would be horribly easy  to turn any screen version into Carry On Up The Cotswolds (non-Brit readers: these were a series of films which mostly involved men being lascivious and women’s clothes pinging off in various social and historical settings).

Jilly’s books are also legendarily hard to cast. Rupert Campbell Black is the very definition of the alpha-male. Tall, athletic, full of what the young people now call ‘rizz’, every woman who has read those books has a version of him in her head and it is almost impossible for mere mortals to match up. I took my best friend, with whom I had discussed these books in the sixth form common room thirty odd years ago, and we agreed that this series would either be very good or very bad, but either way we would have fun.

Reader, I hooted from the credits. Rivals is a lusty, daft, balls-out joyful romp of a tv series. There are as many flashes of male bits as female bits, and it is as much through the female gaze as the male. The musical choices are inspired, the casting – David Tennant, Aidan Turner, Danny Dyer, Alex Hassell, the heart-breaking Katherine Parkinson (the moral heart of the story)- is entirely satisfactory. Plus it is very funny. If you came of age in the 80s, when there seemed to be as many wandering male hands as there were shoulder pads, it will also bring some uncomfortable winces of recognition.

But most of all it was fun. It won’t be to everyone’s tastes – I’m still wondering what American audiences will make of it – but it is to mine. As the credits rolled I remember thinking: oh good. This will help me keep cheerful through the dark nights of winter ahead. Highly recommend.

Just to add: I once spent the day at Jilly Cooper’s house. Like almost everyone who ever goes there (possibly not the local DPD driver, but who knows), I was plied with champagne, failed to leave at the allotted time, and basically ended the day begging to be adopted by her while finally being poured into a taxi cab home. It is a house filled with paintings and love and family and animals and if I could have imagined my dream home at 14, or indeed my dream world, Jilly’s was it. I am also lucky enough to be one of the beneficiaries of her periodic greetings cards, which are almost indecipherable and completely treasured. She has an outwardly daffy persona which completely belies the world of classical knowledge and razor sharp brain underneath. In a world that takes itself terribly seriously, and seems to value vanity and self-consciousness in equal measure, we should all be more Jilly

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Time Bomb by Grant McKee and Ros Franey.

I’ve written a bit about this more lengthily on my Instagram but this week saw the publication of an updated version of a book my late uncle co-wrote which helped secure the release of the Guildford Four, who spent 15 years in prison for a crime they didn’t do (Gerry Conlon was one, pictured above on the day of his release), and the circumstances of which are mired in corruption that has recently been re-concealed by the last Government. If you are interested in a true-life crime book that reads like a thriller and has implications for how we see justice today, please do buy a copy.

Other things I have enjoyed (it’s heavily TV-based as I’m still recovering from the lurgy)

Ludwig: I can’t remember if this is on Sunday nights but it should be; a clever script about a puzzle setter forced to imitate his detective twin in order to discover why he has disappeared. Anna Maxwell Martin and David Mitchell as the eponymous Ludwig are both excellent.

Slow Horses. I am not saying anything but there is one more episode to go and I’m not sure my heart can take it.

Nobody Wants This. A Netflix romcom I really enjoyed until I read the online criticism about its portrayal of Jewish women. So then I felt guilty for enjoying it. Then I read an interview with the writer who said she had based it on her real-life experiences of marrying into a Jewish family. Then I read comments from Jewish women saying what they wanted was a romcom about a hot rabbi. So now - as with 90 per cent of today’s cultural life - I don’t know what to think.

Have a lovely week x