Jilly Cooper: I love being wolf-whistled – but the Metoo movement has ended flirting
JILLY COOPER has revealed that she loves it when men wolf-whistle at her, lamenting that the #Metoo era has left men and women unable to flirt.
She added that the womanising Rupert Campbell-black, a popular character whose romps featured in many of her novels, would be “locked up in prison” in the age of #Metoo.
She added that the #Metoo era means: “You can’t flirt any more. We used to have so much more fun!”
In an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, the 81-year-old explained that she was unperturbed by wolf-whistling and catcalling, and excused some more raucous male behaviour as a result of a high libido.
Ms Cooper said: “Men on the whole have been very nice to me. I love being wolf-whistled. I know men shouldn’t jump on everybody… But I do think men have stronger libidos than women.”
On the subject of millennials, she told the magazine she worries that they do not have as much sex as the older generations used to have because they have access to pornography.
She said: “Millennials are very sweet to me, but I’ve read they’re all virgins.
“They shut themselves away to watch porn all day, or so I’ve read. They must find it difficult to get turned on by normal sex.”
Leave-voting Ms Cooper is also unafraid to speak out over Brexit, explaining: “It’s easy for people to get a divorce very quickly.
“Why can’t Britain? I love this country so much and I’m p---ed off with everybody being so horrible about us now.”
The author turned heads last month when she joked that modern men are having gay affairs because they are “terrified of women”.
Speaking at the Hay Festival, she said that “an adorable gay friend” of hers was surprised to find many married men using online dating sites. “He’s just started going on the internet now and he said it is extraordinary – it is all married men wanting to have gay affairs,” said Cooper.
“Do you think they are so terrified of women now it is safer to go with their own sex?”
She also criticised modern men for “crying all the time” and “growing beards”.