Jilly Cooper

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This is the BBC.

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Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the writer Gilly Cooper. She has been rattling out best-sellers for thirty years, filling them with heroes, horses, dogs, and sex. Her tales of make-believe toffs and their ribbled shenanigans are full of wit and warmth, and set in a Cotswold world populated by dashing cads with glittering eyes and women in sleek jodpers and ravishing ball gowns who really ought to know better. Her books have sold in their multi-millions, and although she takes around four years to research and write each one, she must surely understand instinctively the proclivities and preoccupations of their characters. She, too, was born into what would then have been called an upper-middle-class family, and her childhood was spent among buttercupped fields populated by ponies and pets. At boarding school, she earned the nickname the Unholy Terror, and her working life got off to a rather rickety start. She was sacked from twenty-two jobs consecutively. But much like the story of her fictional heroines, it all came good in the end. She says, I am proud of these books. I know they're frivolous, imperfect, but people love them. Maybe one day I will write something more serious, but basically, my aim in life is to add to the sum of human happiness. So welcome, Jilly Cooper. How did you say that? You did say that. Interesting. It's rather good, isn't it? Not bad. We shall probe it. You've sold, what is it, around about twelve million books so far? I don't know. I don't know. It changes. It seems an awful lot, doesn't it? Yes, it's rather a lot. What do you need around you when you're writing? What are the tools of your trade? Oh, I've got a sweet typewriter called Monica, who's a manual typewriter. She's got a bit of string attached to the spacebar with a pair of scissors. I've always had a I type the three fingers on her. Uh what are the scissors for? The scissors for cut and paste. You know, when a paragraph ought to go a bit higher up, I cut it out and staple it on a bit further up.

Jilly Cooper1:50

You did say that.

Jilly Cooper1:57

I don't know.

Presenter2:21

And when I say it takes you four years then, I'm wondering if that cutting and pasting might be part of it. But actually the research is a big part of it too. You you do research? Research is a big part,'cause I've just done this book about flat racing, so I've had a heavenly time. Lots and lots and lots of champagne and going to the races and going to yards and seeing stallions doing exciting things. Lots of it quite sex in the book too, which is exciting.

Jilly Cooper2:27

It is not for the

Presenter2:41

Um no surprises there. Um in addition to these novels that people know very well, you've written children's books, newspaper columns, you wrote a book on class, you wrote a book on marriage. What form of writing gives you the most pleasure? If indeed it does give you pleasure, because I mean writing is hard work. I'm sort of itching to go back to a bit of journalism because I haven't done any journalism for ages, but already I've got into my next book because I want to write about football. Don't you think that's a brilliant idea? A brilliant idea. What are you going to call it? It's going to be called tackle.

Presenter3:10

In re-reading some of your books, in re-reading some of the articles that you've written over the years, the thing that struck me so much was how much humour and wit. I mean, I found them laugh out loud, funny. When you're writing, are you laughing out loud? Sometimes, it's like I've had bad writing. It's like walking through a great raging river, and you get to a stepping stone, and you suddenly think, oh, good, I've got a good bit. And then you go on through the river again, and then you get another good bit. I do laugh sometimes. Let's talk for a brief moment about what, let's call it Ridergate. It was the cover of your book called Riders. It was 1985 when it was first published. It had a very saucy cover of a man with his hand.

Jilly Cooper3:45

Of a map.

Presenter3:47

Most definitely on a woman's bottom. It was reissued, and the cover was.

Jilly Cooper3:49

It was rubber.

Presenter3:51

Well, really toned down. What did you make of that at the time? Furious. Livid. And when I saw the original cover, I thought, oh my goodness, me, that is a bit over the top. It was very saucy. It was very, very saucy. And I had to speak to a lot of booksellers in the West Country when this jacket was produced, and the women were shocked, rigid, and so it was an obscene thing. But we stuck with it. And it sort of became a sort of icon, that jacket. Shocked, rigid, but they bought it, I bet. Yes, they did, they did. You used to have, when Spitting Image was in its heyday, you had a Spitting Image puppet. Which made you laugh at it. You were always popping up and saying, 6XX. So it made you laugh, did it?

Jilly Cooper3:55

You

Speaker 44:14

Take it. Bh

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I loved having a set. I don't know what's happened to it. My my son tried to find it, but it's obviously somebody's got it now. I'd love to have it. Let's go to the music, Julie Cooper. Tell me about your first one. What is this? And why have you chosen it for your list today? My father was a very good musician. And at home in Yorkshire, we used to spend a lot of time playing Beethoven symphonies as duets, but we also used to sing Schubert. And we also had a very, very, very naughty golden retriever called Simmy.

Jilly Cooper4:34

You're listening.

Presenter4:48

And Simmy was always wandering, and we were always being wrung up by um the cinema and saying, Oh, please can you come and get Simmy?'cause he's been shaking paws with the projectionists for the last half hour, and we can't start the film.

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And he was wonderful, Simmy. Anyway, this it goes to wander is the Miller's Bliss. But we used to sing, To Wander is Simmy's Bliss, To Wander, To Wander, To Wander.

Speaker 45:13

Daswander, the excuse for us, was thus found.

Speaker 45:18

The swamp is given us the swamp.

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Fumbasara, baby, you scared and fumbasan Fumvasara, baby is given and for some.

Jilly Cooper5:42

How many years?

Jilly Cooper5:44

Yeah.

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Dashant wished dust by tagling, these sheets of fano shall have been dust. Gasvason has fashion the swason.

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That was part of Schubert's Wandering Miller from the song cycle The Lovely Mill Maiden sung there by Dietrich Fischer-Deskow with Gerald Moore on piano. Here's the surprising thing, Julie Cooper. You're an Essex girl. I know. Yes, you were born in Essex in 1937 to Bill and Elaine Salett. Tell me about early childhood family life. What do you remember? Very, very happy. Very happy.

Jilly Cooper6:15

Go ahead and

Presenter6:24

They were lovely, my parents. They were very beautiful, both of them. And Daddy went back into the army in 1939. So after that, we sort of wandered around. And I remember Daddy went to Dunkirk. And my poor mother, we were staying up with my aunt in Yorkshire. And mummy was terribly, terribly worried. And evidently, when he was out there, he was sitting on the bank and was tar on the rock. And he thought, oh God, I mustn't get tar on my uniform. So he took his tin hat off and sat on it. But I do remember when suddenly she got the telephone call that my father was safe. And she sang Sunday Over the Rainbow again and again and again. They loved each other. It was very, very nice to see. And so the family moved to this rather splendid Victorian mansion and you wrote when you were around about eight, you said you enjoyed playing Little Miss Muck enormously. So tell me more about playing Little Muck. My father was working for Firmpool Spooner and we moved to this house called Ilkley Hall, which we were actually renting, but I pretended we weren't. And I used to write Ilkley Hall Yorkshire on all my school and wave it around to my school friends. I loved, loved living in the hall. And later when my boyfriends used to come and stay, they were terribly impressed. Because it was a gorgeous house. But then, of course, we left there and moved to London, which is very sad, because my father got fired, which was awful.

Jilly Cooper7:07

Enormously.

Presenter7:31

I I did ponder over writing in your introduction describing you as what would then have been described as upper middle class. Tell me this the class distinction then between middle class and upper middle class. What sort of things would your family get up to that middle classes wouldn't have? Oh, we didn't have a huge estate.

Presenter7:46

And you see, in the book I wrote, Class, the upper middle classes were called Samantha Upwood, and she was very sort of earnest. I think they'd be Ernest Lib Dems now, really. And upper classes don't give a staff about anything. I mean, Rupert Campbellblack, he's upper class in my books, and the upper middles are very worried about everything. And given that, you know, your father had a job and he had to pay the bills, so that's what differentiates the upper middle classes from the upper classes, of course. You said he got fired. Were the circumstances then much reduced for the family? Did you ended up having to leave the manor? I wrote May You Rot in lipstick all over all the directors' notebooks before we left. That cheered me up.

Jilly Cooper8:07

Yeah, what

Jilly Cooper8:12

You ended up having to leave the manor.

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Um, is it true that you could

Presenter8:22

You could read and write before you were five. I don't know. Where did you get that from? From my research notes. Well, it's very good. I'm sh I probably could. I don't know. I'm sure. I think my mother tries to. Let's just see, yes, shall we?

Jilly Cooper8:27

So in favour of the

Jilly Cooper8:30

But I think my mother tried to do it.

Presenter8:32

No, I think my mother taught me to read. The awful thing when you get old, you can't remember a lot. You see, this thing that this the suspicion I have is that

Presenter8:40

You are always so incredibly nice and you but you've slightly flattered to deceive and the deception is that you're just rather a fluffy person. I think you're a rather rigorously smart and intellectual person. I'm very bitchy. I'm very bitchy. Oh good, we are going to have a good morning. Tell me about your next piece of music then. Tell me about your second disc, Jilly Cooper. This is sound music. I loved this thing because it's all about redemption. I must have had a wicked childhood, but sometime in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good. And she got this heavenly man to reward her. And I believe in that, don't you?

Jilly Cooper8:50

Very bitchy.

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Uh

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For here you are, standing there, loving me.

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Whether or not

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You should

Jilly Cooper9:25

So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done some

Presenter9:42

Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer's. I met him, I met him. Did you? Who? Christopher Plummer? Yes, he was wonderful. Let me tell people what the music was. It was something good from the original soundtrack of Rogers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. When did you meet him? I met him at dinner.

Jilly Cooper9:43

I like him.

Presenter9:54

He was absolutely gorgeous and he had a lovely wife and we had a brilliant evening. He was really, really funny. Tell me a bit more about your mother. She was a very good seamstress. She was very good-looking. She was absolutely sweet. She was very, very, very giggly and kind. She was a vicar's daughter. And he was at the Battle of the Somme, my grandfather. Yes, he was a Padre. And he was very, very brave. And the men absolutely adored him because he used to take funerals in the middle of great battles. And all the men at the funeral would be hiding in the grave. And my grandfather would carry on with the service. He was a wonderful man. And do you remember your grandfather? Yes, he was sweet, sweet. He used to come and bring me peppermint creams in bed after I cleaned my teeth. Tell me about Rufus, your first pony. A Willow. Oh, Rufus, yes, that was hysterical. Go on then.

Jilly Cooper10:25

Yeah.

Jilly Cooper10:33

A room?

Presenter10:36

Well done. Rufus, after the war I wanted a pony, so we went to Cornwall, our first hold in years, and we met Rufus. And he was absolutely sweet, he was a bay, and Daddy bought him. He had to come up from Cornwall to where we lived in Corbyn at the time. And Daddy went to get him. And so I came back from school, terribly excited. I must have been about eight. And I rushed into the field and said, Rufus, Rufus, and he promptly bit me. He was a monster. And also the other thing, he was something called uncut. So he was still a stallion. So every time I went out for a walk with him, he would sort of rush up to a mare and mount it. So I'd be behind. And it was quite, quite tricky. So sadly, Rufus was sold. Your books are constantly populated by horses and dogs. What is it about them that you find so appealing?

Jilly Cooper11:02

So

Presenter11:17

Oh, I just love animals. And horses are beautiful, and particularly race horses. And they're so touching. And I just love dogs, because I'm applause junkie probably, and nothing gives you more applause than a dog, does it?

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It's the undiluted, unjudgmental love. And that's fun. I mean, and now I'm a widow, you know, I've got Bluebell, and Bluebell shares bed with me. I'm sure my darling housekeeper thinks I've got a lover, because Bluebell's got such long legs. I start off one side of the bed, and then Bluebell sticks her legs out, so I have to get over to the other side of this huge double bed. So both sides are slept in. What greed is Bluebell? Bluebell's Greyhound. Black Greyhound. She's wonderful. Tell me about your next piece of music, Julie Cooper. This is your third. What are we going to hear? Why have you chosen this? Oh, this is Brahms' piano concerto. I love Brahms. I wrote a book called A Passionata, and I went on tour with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and John Lill was the soloist who went with us. This is the Brahms. He was playing then. Brahms' first piano concerto, which is absolutely beautiful.

Jilly Cooper11:28

Mental love.

Presenter13:14

That was Brahm's piano concerto number one in D minor, played by John Lill with the Halley Orchestra conducted by James Lochran. You were sent, Julie Cooper, to boarding school, aged eleven. How did it match up to your expectations?

Presenter13:30

I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear it. It was like prison. I was so happy at home. And and also I missed my pony and my dog and my brother and my parents. I mean, that's probably that order, but but I I I it was I couldn't believe it. And the odd thing, my parents were very loving, but my first term, Salisbury, all the way from Yorkshire, they never came and saw me.

Presenter13:50

As was the way in those days. Anyway. Did you write to them if you were to write it? Yes, I wrote lots to them, yes. Then I started writing to boyfriends that cheered me up. But it was prison. And did you get little sort of packages of tuck and things to cheer you up? Did they did they know you were unhappy?

Jilly Cooper13:51

And and no telephone, so I'm in

Jilly Cooper13:59

Pre s I wrote

Jilly Cooper14:07

Did they know?

Presenter14:09

No, because money wouldn't say so. It was much a thing you couldn't say you were unhappy.

Presenter14:13

And so I didn't. I love my friends. I got a rabbit very, very early on. And the rabbit immediately had 11 puppets. I mean, I've got a baby rabbit. Baby rabbits. Is it kittens? It might actually be kittens. I don't know. Somebody will correct us, I'm sure. There'll be a flurry of activity on Twitter about this. That was at the summer it had all these baby rabbits. And it was speech day, and all these parents were going around. And I put a sign saying, please be quiet, animals breeding.

Jilly Cooper14:20

Baby rabbit.

Presenter14:37

They'd all be born about a week before, but um tell me about the nickname, The Unholy Terror.

Presenter14:44

Well, I just got bored, you know, and and I used to always be sent out of Sance, and my best friend used to be sent out of Sance too. So we used to meet round the back and chat. I was very undisciplined, and we used to have midnight feasts and things like that. Were you writing by this time? Had you started writing? I always wrote pony stories about a little girl that had a pony and then got 55 rosettes at the local gym corner and the head of the pony club has always summed up mustachio band said, Well done, my dear, well done. And that was all they were. They were awful stories. I wrote a play once and I sent it to a woman's own. Did they print it? No, they wrote back. They said they liked it very much, but they didn't do plays.

Presenter15:20

You said that you started writing too to boys. I mean, when did you have your first boyfriend, or somebody you would have called a boyfriend? About fourteen. But the interesting thing, one didn't kiss them. I don't think I got kissed until about nineteen, I remember, had my first kiss. One just sort of gazed at each other and went into front of the woods. I don't think we did anything. What about there was a French exchange student. Was that Michelle? Michelle. Oh, God.

Presenter15:43

Oh, I was sent up to France for a whole summer holidays. And Michel was one of the son of the household. It was absolutely divine. Oh. What did he look like? Dark and broad-shouldered and smouldering-eyed, and it was just absolutely gorgeous. And you did apply for Oxford? I did, I didn't get him. You didn't get him, but that shows I mean you must have had belief in your own intellectual capabilities to apply for Oxford. I wanted to go, I want to go,'cause there were ten men to one woman. All we thought about the boys in those days. If you've been at a girls' boarding school, all you thought about the men.

Jilly Cooper16:04

No, I was a big girl.

Presenter16:11

Lorry drivers, anybody who came by the gardeners, eighty-year-old gardeners was objective last of us, unbelievable.

Jilly Cooper16:15

I believe

Presenter16:17

I have a picture, Julie Cooper. Tell me now about your next piece of music. We're going to have your fourth. Oh, well, how apt. Tell me about this. Well, this is because I've suddenly decided to write the next book about football. And we have a lovely little local team called Forest Green. They're absolutely sweet. And they're practically getting into the league. And they went to Wembley this year. And it would have been so exciting. So they took me to Wembley. We're beaten by Grimsby, which is really heartbreaking. But this is one of the songs that fans sing.

Jilly Cooper16:20

Going to have

Presenter16:43

And to hear about 3,000 men singing this song is just, oh, I mean Elvis sings it wonderfully, but it was terribly exciting when Blue, I thought.

Speaker 416:53

Why is men save?

Speaker 416:59

Only fools rush in.

Speaker 417:07

But I can't help.

Speaker 417:12

Falling in love.

Speaker 417:16

Where is you?

Speaker 417:21

Shall I stay?

Presenter17:26

Elvis Presley can't help falling in love with you. Now tell me, Julie Cooper, you didn't get into Oxford, as you were saying, but you did learn to type and you took a number of jobs in quick succession. This is when you were temping. Just what did you do wrong to get scratched? I couldn't type. And so some nice man would dictate to me on Monday morning and I'd hand the letters back by sort of Tuesday night and I'd come in on Wednesday morning and he'd say I'm very sorry, lovely having you here, but you can't type, so I would go on somewhere else. And you also didn't you worked as a reporter for the a Cub reporter for the Middlesex Independent. Tell me about life then. Oh.

Jilly Cooper17:36

Just what did you

Jilly Cooper17:37

To get it.

Jilly Cooper17:55

Tell me about

Presenter17:57

I had a lovely boss. One day he was very, very drunk. I said, What are you doing? And he said, Whack, rack, this is my boss. He said, Whack!

Presenter18:04

He said, I'm a seagull, whack, and I'm going to fly round and do it on everybody I don't like.

Presenter18:09

So he was plastered. He was plastered. It's about ten o'clock in the morning. So it was quite wild too then those days, you see. They don't do that in journalism now, do they? They certainly don't. So you in this environment. Well, I tell you what I did. I went and interviewed Harold Pinter.

Jilly Cooper18:18

Oh, I tell you what I

Presenter18:21

Lots of people I went and interviewed, I went in and I wrote a double page broadsheet on him. And he came in and he bought fifty copies, wasn't that lovely? And you married Leo then in nineteen sixty one. You had known each other since you were children. And then again you'd met as adults. His first marriage ended

Jilly Cooper18:31

Yeah

Jilly Cooper18:33

Gotcha.

Presenter18:38

And you met him at a again, at a dinner party? No, no, no, I met him because I went out to a pub with a very glamorous boy who was giving me a hard time. And I talked to another man because I was trying to get my boyfriend jealous. And he shared a flat with Leo, so he asked me to supper. And there was Leo. And I said, oh gosh, I know Leo. And he was just as lovely as he always was. He was just funny. And I was working at the Ideal Home exhibition selling Candle Arbor. And I looked such an awful mess. And my boss asked me to put my hair up. And I went back to Leo's flat later. And he took all my hair down, so it fell down like a Galsworthy heroin, and said I was never to put my hair up again, because he didn't like it, because he wanted to marry me. Wasn't that lovely? But this is the third date. Third date? And did you feel the same way about him? Heaven, coming home.

Jilly Cooper19:21

Ugh.

Presenter19:25

It was lovely. It was a sweet male. Let's have some more music, Julie Cooper. Tell me about this. This is your fifth. Oh, I love this. This is very funny. Strauss, Richard Strauss. He wrote a tone poem about the hero. It's called The Hero's Life. And they said, who's the hero? And he said, me. They said, why is it you? He said, well, I'm much more interested than Napoleon or Alexander the Great. I'm an interesting person. So I'm going to write a tone poem about me. And this last bit, which I picked, is when the horns are him, Strauss, and then his wife is Pauline. She's on the solo violin. And the critics are scrabbling away and going, So it's beautiful.

Presenter21:04

The Hero's Retirement from This World and Consummation, composed by Richard Strauss and played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barrenboyn. Jilly Cooper, let's concentrate for a moment on your early married life with Leo. You wrote a book about how to be a good wife and how to make a marriage survive. Tell me about... Well, it was very much a book of its time, I think, if we go back and look at it now. But tell me about the reality of your early married life. Well, we were terribly poor.

Presenter21:33

I don't know why we were but we were terribly poor for summer loading, we were both working. I mean I was terribly house proud. I mean awful. And I had to go to work and then this awful thing of shopping in the lunch hour. And then you go home and then you'd have to wash shirts, iron shirts, clean the flat, cook dinner and then you made love all night and then you got up in the morning and you went to work and the process was repeated and you just died of exhaustion.

Presenter21:59

And did you throw parties? Were you partying? Endless parties. We had parties and we went to parties. Leo played cricket every weekend, so I used to go and watch him play cricket so that the flat didn't get cleaned up then. And it was just complete chaos. But it was very happy. I said extraordinary things. I said, if you amuse a man in bed, he won't worry about the mountain of dust underneath. This was in your book, How to Stay Married. I think that's rather a good line, don't you?

Speaker 322:00

Functions.

Jilly Cooper22:00

What's the use?

Jilly Cooper22:20

I think that's rather

Presenter22:23

I'm hoping nobody ever looks under my bed. You suffered an ectopic pregnancy um quite early on in your marriage. I mean, de devastating news, I imagine, that as a young married woman you would not be able to conceive.

Presenter22:37

Was it a did it seem like a huge moment? I was devastated. I mean, meantime I couldn't have children because, you know, I wanted to have children. Amelia had a lovely daughter from a previous marriage, and I wanted to have children. But I was so lucky, because everybody said adopt, adopt, and then I went along to see this wonderful woman, and um we talked about babies. She said, I think I might find you a baby in about two years. And she found one, Felix, for us in a month. And it was just heavenly. I couldn't believe the wellsprings of love that pour out of you when you have a baby, can you? I mean, it's just so extraordinary, isn't it? I love it. And then Emily, darling Emily, came in um in six days. I mean, blissful. I mean, these darling, darling, darling babies. I was so lucky. And so you had these two beautiful young children, but you you did go back to being

Presenter23:17

A writer. You met a man called, I think, Godfrey Smith. He was the editor of what was known at the time as the Sunday Times Colour magazine. And you met him and you chatted to him and he was therefore inspired to employ you as a writer. What was it you were saying to him that was so? I'm saying that thing about making love all night. And just a chaos of married life. And he laughed and said, write about it. And I wrote about it and it appeared in the Colour Mag. And it sounds terribly boastful, but I was offered ten jobs that week.

Jilly Cooper23:31

So I'm showing that thing.

Presenter23:43

And one of them was Harry Evans, who was the editor of the Sunday Times. And he said, come up and see me. And he just said, we'd like to write a column in the Sunday Times. And did the writing come easily to you?

Presenter23:53

Well, I was I mean Leah was very funny. All my friends were saying very funny things and and I didn't care I was I was so excited to have a column. I was like a little child with a brick on the end of a rope I just didn't care whose ankles I hit. I was so brave I I read those pieces back and I can't think how I was so Mrs Whitehouse, I was awful to her. And were there consequences? I mean you were a very social couple. Did you meet people out and about who said, I can't believe you had the nerve to write that about my mother or my yes they did. L lot of that went on. My poor mother,'cause in the first piece I said I'd put a red scarf into the launderette machine, and Lear's um clothes had come out red and he said he was the only member of the rug of fifteen with a rose pink jock strap, and all my mother's friends were ringing and saying, Helene, darling, what's a jock strap?

Presenter24:33

You always had that sort of eye for a bit of sauce. That's always been part of your world view. Well, I just th think I don't know, I just c tend to think things are quite funny, really. I mean, all those pieces were written fifteen times. I'm very stupid. I'm slow. That's why I'm so bad at exams, because I can't think quickly. Well, let's put the stupid and slow to one side, because I don't think anybody truly believes that. Tell me about caring so much that you write a piece fifty rewrite it fifteen times. Well, it doesn't get right, and I like it to flow. And um it's very boring to start off with, but it improves. But I mean, you can imagine. I mean, I think the last book about flat raising, I mean, that was written about five times. Massive great book, again and again again, because I wasn't happy with it. Doggedly determined and hardworking. Dogged, I like dogs.

Jilly Cooper24:55

Yeah.

Jilly Cooper25:10

Hard work.

Presenter25:13

You began writing novels then in the seventies. I was one of those young teenagers who devoured them, names like Emily and Bella and Harriet and Octavia and Prudence and Imogen. I couldn't get enough of them. I wanted you to write more. At the time

Jilly Cooper25:21

Oh sweet and harry.

Jilly Cooper25:24

Get it.

Presenter25:28

Why do you think they were successful? Because they flew off the shelves, those. I think they were successful because the men were lovely. I mean, the men were very, very attractive. There was a lot of Leo in the men, but a lot of men I knew. And I think if you can be funny and have a glamorous hero at the end, I think it gets people going. Tell me about your next piece of music, Julie Cooper. What are we going to hear now? Well, this is it. It sounds an awful thing to say. But one of my best things in the world is getting a bit drunk with my children. And both Felix and Emily are terrific drinking companions. And I remember one evening, Felix and Emily and I got terribly, terribly drunk listening to Buffalo Soldier. We danced all around the garden and everything. And it's always a happy reminder of loving my children and having fun with them.

Jilly Cooper25:45

Well this is

Speaker 326:06

Fellow soldier.

Speaker 326:09

Drill like the wild star

Speaker 326:13

He was a buffalo soldier

Speaker 326:17

In the heart of America

Speaker 326:21

Stolen from Africa

Speaker 326:25

Brought to America.

Speaker 326:29

Fighting an arrival

Speaker 326:32

I think I'll suffer

Presenter26:37

That was Bob Marley in Buffalo Soldier, and you said rather marvellously, Jilly Cooper, chosen for the importance of getting drunk with your children. We should say that your children were fully grown by the time you were dancing round the garden with them if you were no. Your marriage to Leo lasted fifty two years before his death in twenty thirteen, and it was a marriage that survived as many do.

Jilly Cooper26:43

Okay.

Jilly Cooper26:47

Mm-hmm.

Presenter26:55

you know, ups and downs. There were infidelities, there were money troubles. You looked after him for the many years that he had Parkinson's.

Presenter27:03

Fifty two years is a long time to be with one person. What do you put the great success of your marriage down to? Well, luck. We married a very nice man.

Presenter27:12

Um

Presenter27:13

Also, I've said it's creaking bed springs.

Presenter27:17

And I've said the bed springs are creaking because of hysterical laughter. And we did laugh about an awful lot of things together, which was lovely. I remember the Daily Mail ringing up and saying, what does Julia wear in bed? And Leo said, dogs mostly. And then, I don't know if this is probably again for a family programme, but he said, and if ever I reach over in the night for something furry, I get bitten.

Presenter27:42

Sorry. It's all right. And is it true that Leo never read your books?

Presenter27:48

I know he did he read Prudence once when he had flu and said it made him feel worse.

Presenter27:53

I think he did. I think he had the odd look. But I was just as culpable because he published military history and um I didn't read them. I remember the old one. I didn't read that many of them because I'm not very good on military history. So it was reciprocal or lack of reading. Let's talk for a moment about writers. Um the first of your Rutcher Chronicles in in nineteen eighty five had the famous he's now famous the hero uh Rupert Campbell Black.

Presenter28:16

And any worry over Leo's pink jockstrap must have been a million miles away, because when you wrote Riders things got very, very racy indeed. I mean, what did your friends say? What did your mother say? What did the school teacher say? My back manager said, How should Jilly possibly um know things like this?

Jilly Cooper28:25

What did the school teacher say?

Presenter28:31

And how did you possibly? Well, I don't th they weren't that bad. It was an Audrey and Keeney, I made that up. And.

Presenter28:37

Is it true that the books were banned from your kids' school? That was brilliant, wasn't it? They only came back. Oh, mummy, mummy, your books are banned. And so I rang up the headmistress and I said, I hear my books are banned. I said, All I can tell you, if you're going to ban my books, I won't be able to pay the school fees. Oh, no and of course they were they reinserted.

Jilly Cooper28:40

Guess

Presenter28:55

What advice and I'm sure you get asked often what advice do you give to aspiring writers when they say to you, How do I write a blockbuster? Keep a diary. Always keep a diary because it won't remember. And also, when you're twenty-five you immediately forget what it's like to be twenty-four. Memory's very full, so that helps. And I just think every time anything funny happens, write it down. And remember the five senses, what things feel like and what they they sound like and what they um look like because that lifts the prose.

Presenter29:22

And I just think Follio Heart probably. Let's have some more music, Julie Cooper. We are on your seventh. Um, this we played at Leo's funeral, um, and it's from Elijah, and Leo introduced me to Elijah, which is by Mendelsohn. And it's an absolute beautiful piece of music. It was lovely at the funeral, because everybody was very sad, but we had some very funny speeches, and we had this music in the middle, and it was lovely to see the sort of sadness on people's faces suddenly becoming joy at this piece of music, which is so beautiful.

Presenter30:55

Part of Mendelssohn's He Watching Over Israel Slumbers Not performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Cordeson conducted there by Richard Hickox.

Presenter31:04

You had a small stroke, Jilli Cobrik, in two thousand and ten. Have you done things in your life to, um, you know, institute a fitness regime to change the way you eat? Have you have you changed things?

Presenter31:17

Um, I probably I mean, I try and eat lots of fruit.

Presenter31:20

And I try and drink cless. But lo for long days writing it cheers one up, wasn't it the odd drink? Um but the thing is I'd had my hip operations, I haven't been walking dogs quite so much, but I'm going to start doing that again as soon as that gets better. You've got five grandchildren yourself now. What sort of granny are you?

Presenter31:34

Oh, awful. I've got two copies of the Good Granny Guide somebody gave me, hopefully, and I love my grandchildren. They come and see me all the time, but I don't get left to look after them, because I'm not very good at the children. I forget, I go off and sort of wander off and think about writing, and so a lot of grannies are wonderful. They look after them for days on end, don't they?

Presenter31:50

Tell me

Presenter31:52

Where you put the importance of charm in life? Because it seems to me that is something that you.

Presenter31:57

Wherever you go, and whatever you do, and whenever I read interviews with you, you are always careful to be charming and good company.

Presenter32:05

Well, my grandmother told me that when you see somebody, you look for something nice to say about them to cheer them up. That was my grandmother's advice to me. And I think it's not bad advice. It does enhance human happiness, doesn't it? I think it's very sad now that everybody seems to bash everybody down now. I think it's a shame. I like to cherish people and make them feel happier. Cast away to this desert island. You know, society, the warp and weft of how we all get on, is your lifeblood. Taken away from it on a desert island. How daily will you survive with that?

Presenter32:39

I've always said I suffer from hermatitis. I mean, when you're writing, you you you don't mind being alone for days on end, really. So I'm actually quite good on my own. I think I'd be all right. I'd miss my animals. I'd miss people, my close family, terribly, wouldn't you? Yes. Awful, awful. Tell me about your final piece of music, Julie Cooper. What is it? I wrote about the Melbourne Cup in my book Mount, and this piece of music is played there. That they sing Here's to the Heroes, and there's not a dry eye in the place when they sing this song'cause it's so beautiful.

Presenter34:17

Here's to the heroes played by the band of the Cold Stream Guards. I'm going to send you away now, as you know, Jilly Cooper, and to go with you on to this island.

Presenter34:25

You get some books, you get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take another tome along with you. What will yours be? I'm very excited to have the Bible and Shakespeare. I mean, gosh, the good stories there. I take the Oxford Book of Quotations. That's yours then? You're allowed a luxury as well. What will that be? Well, I wanted a private jet. I couldn't have that fly me home, Buddha. You couldn't, no.

Presenter34:45

It's as simple as that. I couldn't take bluebell, could I my greyhound? I'm afraid not.

Presenter34:50

Well, what I'd like is I'd like a great big sack of nuts coming in, so I could tame the monkeys. Ah'cause then I could have some pets round me. Right, that's yours. And finally, which one of these eight discs would you save? Oof, um probably um the Mendelsohn. But all of them. I'd be very sad to give up any of them, really. I would like to add 800 records, and it's such a treat to have been listening to all and have a choice to make. Well, you've made a wonderful choice, and thank you for that. Julie Cooper, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island this. Thank you very much.

Presenter35:59

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