Jilly Cooper/Tackle!

My first boyfriend Nick was an aspiring journo and Fulham fan.

One day Jilly Cooper then a witty columnist for The Sunday Times granted him an interview in her Fulham home.

She was pleased to hear that Fulham had won.

I read that she is a football fan now supporting Leeds United.

Now aged 86 she is still writing actively and her latest novel, set in her mythical county of Rutshire, is about football.

Rupert Campbell-Black, a rich race horse owner, has acquired local team Sarsten Rovers. It’s her normal mix of sex and wealth.

She is clever with words but in my opinion a limited writer, not going descriptively beyond ‘ beautiful’ and ‘lovely’.

There are, beneath the goings on in the football club, a tender account of Agatha Campbell-Black’s cancer treatment and social deprivation in a children’s home and sink estate but generally La Cooper sticks to what she knows best – handsome men getting their rocks off and rich oversexed women.

Book covers are important and this features a man in white shorts with a red card tucked into them and the double-entendre of the title Tackle over his genitalia.

Her readership is based on the premise that women prefer to read about rather than  watch sex and I imagine her constituent is a Chardonnay quaffing divorcee in her 40s having her last fling.

Ironically, for one who titillates, it was her husband also who had an affaire.

This is the first novel I have reviewed for the Rust which I have not finished as quite simply I was bored with it.

Still, one can only admire a writer aged 86 still turning books out.