I’m ready to meet a new man, says Jilly Cooper

JILLY COOPER — who launches her latest bonkbuster, Mount!, with a glittering party at the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge tomorrow — reveals that she would love to find romance again.

The 79-year-old author (pictured), who lost her beloved husband, publisher Leo, in 2013, says she’s ready for a new man in her life.

But any suitor would have to be able-bodied, unlike Leo, for whom Jilly became the main carer in his later years.

‘I’m such a romantic,’ she says of a potential relationship. ‘It would be lovely, but I don’t think anyone would put up with me. It would be nice to have someone to go to the cinema and on jaunts with.’

However, she adds: ‘I don’t really want to be a carer again. That sounds awful and selfish, but I know how tiring it is. I realise now how lucky I was to have married Leo. He was so funny and confident.

‘I like incredibly strong men — they’re so sexy. It was lovely to go to a party with him. I felt so safe.’ Their long marriage survived revelations in the Nineties that Leo had a six-year affair with publishing assistant Sarah Johnson.