This Is Your Life: Jilly Cooper

Jilly COOPER (1937-2025)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Jilly Cooper, author and journalist, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the Kings Stores pub in London's Spitalfields, having been led to believe she was there to do interviews for a television programme based on her book The British in Love.

Jilly, who was born in Hornchurch but grew up in Ilkley, took a typing course after leaving school before joining the Middlesex Independent in 1957 as a junior reporter. After a variety of jobs, mainly in publishing, she got her break as a journalist in 1969 with a regular column in The Sunday Times Magazine.

The newspaper column led to her first book, How to Stay Married, published in 1969. She followed that with several works of non-fiction, including books on class, animals and marriage, before turning to fiction, with her first of six romantic novels, Emily, in 1975.

"What are you doing here? I can't believe it! How embarrassing!"

programme details...

Edition No: 538
Subject No: 535
Broadcast date: Wed 19 Mar 1980
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Tue 18 Mar 1980
Venue: New London Theatre
Series: 20
Edition: 17
Code name: Butterworth

on the guest list...

Leo - husband
Joanna Lumley
Emily - daughter
Felix - son
Bill - father
Elaine - mother
Timothy - brother
Angela - sister-in-law
Louise - niece
Gwen - aunt
Jenny Pickering
Sue Greaveson
Christine Robb
Harold Evans
Rodney Marsh
Duke of Manchester
Duchess of Manchester
David Dimbleby
Josceline Dimbleby
Phyllis Garrett
Aphra Lloyd

production team...

Researcher: Robin Ellis-Bextor
Writers: Tom Brennand, Roy Bottomley
Directors: Paul Stewart Laing, Terry Yarwood, Robert Reed
Producer: Jack Crawshaw

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

A Novel Life

a page-turning good read

The Night of 1000 Lives

a celebration of a thousand editions

A Life Remembered

tributes to the original presenter

Maurice Leonard

the researcher's story

Screenshots of Jilly Cooper This Is Your Life

Scriptwriter Roy Bottomley recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, This Is Your Life: The Story of Television's Famous Big Red Book...

Another best-seller who started literary life as a humble local newspaper reporter was Jilly Cooper - she worked for the old Middlesex Independent at their Brentford office.

On 18 March 1980, she was in an East End pub doing interviews for a television programme based on her book The British in Love.

Long before her runaway best-sellers Riders, Rivals and Polo, Jilly found journalistic fame after sending an article to the Sunday Times describing her frantic, and funny, experiences as a working wife. The then editor, Harold Evans, immediately offered Jilly a regular column because she was someone so many young working women could identify with.

Jilly's flat-sharing experiences became the situation comedy It's Awfully Bad For Your Eyes, Darling starring Joanna Lumley, who was also there, along with Jilly's friends and neighbours from Putney's 'Media Gulch' - as she called it - David and Josceline Dimbleby.

Jilly had written a dedication in her book to her former English teacher, 'who seemed to fill the dusty classroom with light'. We brought her along for a twenty years reunion. Miss Aphra Lloyd said she was the only member of the staff who could take Jilly's work seriously. It was covered in ink blots and 'dreadful crossings out'.

Very Jilly Cooper.

Series 20 subjects