Jilly Cooper on how she avoids being sued

Author reveals how she names controversial characters after places to avoid causing offence

Her novels detail the hedonistic exploits of the super-rich on the showjumping circuit, ravishing each other and ruining marriages. So Jilly Cooper has to be certain her characters are not accidentally named after someone in real life. Now the 80-year-old has revealed her method of avoiding being sued. “You have to be very careful not to use real people’s names,” she said. “I find it safer to use local towns and villages for surnames.”

HER novels detail the hedonistic exploits of the super-rich as they navigate the showjumping circuit, ravishing each other and ruining marriages.

So Jilly Cooper has to be certain her characters are never accidentally named after someone in real life.

Now the 80-year-old novelist, right, has revealed her tried-and-tested method of avoiding being sued – she uses towns and villages as inspiration.

Admitting she sometimes fears legal action over her raunchy novels, she said she had to be very careful not to associate one of her badly behaved aristocrats with someone in the public eye. “You have to be very careful not to use real people’s names by mistake, as they might sue you if they behave badly in the story,” she said. “I find it safer to use local towns and villages for surnames.”

While she has admitted some characters, including her best-known lothario Rupert Campbell-black, are influenced by real-life aristocrats, the origin of others remain vague.

Basil Baddingham is one of the many characters who appears to have been named using Cooper’s “towns and villages” system. The talented polo player, who owns Bar Sinister in the novels, shares his name with Badingham, a small parish in Suffolk.

Lysander Hawkley, known as the “man who makes husbands jealous”, and Dame Hermione Harefield, a single mother who has various dalliances, also share their surnames with spots on the map. Her new book, in which she abandons showjumping for football, will have a character named Harry Stanton-harcourt – the surname being a place in Oxfordshire and the first name coming from Princ Prince Harry. In another case, howe however, she mischievously chievously used a write writer’s full name after reading a bad r review. “I named a nau naughty goat after ter her in the nextne book,” she said. Luckily for her, the writer took it “very“well and said it was suchsuc a nice goat that she didn didn’t mind”. Elsewh Elsewhere, Cooper turns to Shakespeare sp to name her horses. Campbellb is one of the few characterscharac whose inspirationinspirati she has admitted.admitted The handsome stud, who, over the course of the series, charms stable girls and upperclass wives before winning an Olympic medal, was revealed last year to have been influenced by Andrew Parker Bowles, former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall, Rupert Lycett-green, the fashion designer, and the Earl of Suffolk.

Cooper said it was their style and their “aristocratic glamour” that was the inspiration for the character, not their bad behaviour.

The author revealed her tricks while speaking to the family history website Find My Past.

The website has created a tool named You Called Me What?! that allows members of the public to find out information about themselves.

Cooper has previously revealed she spent time with her local football team in Gloucestershire, Forest Green Rovers, to research her new novel.