Lay off the bounder! It is NOT a crime to channel Jilly Cooper
FOR some reason, there is currently a stewards’ enquiry after footage of an exchange between a hunt saboteur and a huntsman went viral, which is ridiculous. In the video, Mrs Linda Hoggard, 41, a well-upholstered sloe-eyed brunette, confronts a Mr Charles Carter, 33, at a meet up North, and screeches at him that he’s illegally chasing a fox.
The well-scrubbed and mounted Mr Carter, immaculate in his red coat and white stock, removes his iPhone from his spotless white jodhpurs, tells her that she’s ‘very pretty’ and starts filming her right back. He asks the stroppy hunt sab for her name and number. ‘I’d quite like to shag you actually,’ he adds, and the whole encounter ends with him saying, ‘Can I take you to bed, please’ before riding off.
Of course, I have to, for form’s sake, say that it’s never clever or nice to treat women like sexual objects rather than deal with their objections, as Charles Carter did, but I’m afraid that’s not what I think here.
As someone who has self-medicated for decades on the matchless oeuvre of Jilly Cooper, I found nothing wrong with this at all, and to my mind everyone else is in danger of losing the plot – or rather, has forgotten it.
Our dashing rotter (didn’t he look just like a younger David Cameron astride his grey – and how one longs to know the horse’s name) should never had had to resign as a Tory councillor in disgrace.
For crying in a bucket – Carter was merely acting in character! He was, of course, channelling the popular bounder in Jilly’s bonkbusters: the irresistible owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black.
In fact, in one seminal scene, (page 87 of Riders) a little girl kicks a hunt saboteur at a meet: ‘Rupert Campbell-Black, who was passing, grinned down at her. “Well done, angel. I’ll marry you when you grow up.”’
To mark the 30th anniversary reissue of Riders last year, Jilly revealed that RC-B was based on an amalgam of three men, one of whom was the former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall.
She threw a party in London to which they all turned up (there is a funny photo of Jilly with all three) but, as with the most memorable fictional characters, the reason we can all identify with RC-B is because he’s a recognisable type: a sexy, chateau-bottled sh1t.
I’m prepared to bet the equestrian estate plus indoor heated menage that Jilly would agree with me that it’s terribly silly that this latter-day Rupert-lite has had to fall on his sword. William Nunn, leader of Breckland Council, said: ‘Having been made aware of the video this morn- ing, I was appalled by the conduct of one of my Conservative councillors who has clearly brought the party and the council into disrepute as a result of his behaviour.’
OH, DO trot on, you pompous little man! Yes, what Carter did was out of the 1970s playbook: more racy Rutshire than North Yorkshire 2017. But I’m prepared to bet that Mrs Hoggard was also a tiny bit thrilled that a younger man told her she was hot, even if she took it as an aggressive act.
She shrilled, ‘I’ll tell my husband that then, shall I?’ – thus proving that women love nothing more than having evidence to deploy that someone else finds them attractive.
Sigh. If only everyone concerned had read Riders, or Jump!, they would have laughed, and not bothered to throw the book at the rotter.
Anyway, the whole uplifting episode can be summed up in these two snippets from reviews of Riders.
Sex and horses: who could ask for more?
A delight from start to finish!
I HAD terrible Insta-rrhoea until I heard the advice of Don McCullin – the only photographic knight of the realm – to amateur snappers (ie everyone): no pets, no sunsets, no family. How Sir Don would shudder at all our boringly boastful Instagram feeds.