Jilly Cooper recalls ‘terrifying’ attempted rape by another author-Meghna Amin-Entertainment – Metro

Romance novelist Dame Jilly Cooper has revealed a terrifying experience in her 20s (Picture: Mike Marsland/WireImage)

Romance novelist Dame Jilly Cooper has revealed a terrifying experience she went through when she was nearly raped in her 20s.

The 87-year-old Rutshire Chronicles writer has recounted the horrific incident in a new interview, saying that the MeToo movement has ‘been good in many respects’.

This comes despite her past comments that the movement has ‘diminished’ men and even seeming to mock MeToo by naming one of her fictional cats MewToo.

In a new interview however, Dame Jilly spoke about MeToo – which went viral in 2017 when US actress Alyssa Milano urged women to speak out about their experiences of sexual harassment or assault – saying: ‘It is seriously awful for women – terrifying – to be jumped on by a man.’

Speaking to Celia Walden, the wife of Piers Morgan, she went on to share her own harrowing experience when she was working for a publishers in her 20s.

‘I was taken out to lunch by a man and on the way back in a cab he jumped on me and pulled my clothes apart. It was awful. I was terrified.’

She went on to The Telegraph: ‘When I got back to the office I was in floods of tears and told my manager that someone had just tried to rape me.’

The author has previously spoken about the MeToo movement (Picture: John Stillwell – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

The Jump! author said her boss took her into his office and insisted she name the man who did it, so it could be reported.

‘But then, when I told him the man’s name and he realised it was one of our authors… I was ushered out of that office in two seconds. So yes, I think [MeToo] has been good in many respects.’

The publication also notes that in the past, Dame Jilly said she worried ‘that these days, if you put a hand on a woman’s shoulder, you’re about to rape her.

‘But what I find the saddest thing of all, is that now some gentle pass you made 30 years ago could come back at you, and then your career will go, your marriage will go: everything will go.’

Dame Jilly recounted the ‘terrifying’ incident’ (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Dame Jilly previously said that her lothario character Rupert Campbell-Black, who features in many of her books including Rivals, which is being made into a Disney+ series with David Tennant, Emily Atack and Danny Dyer, and is known for his sexual exploits, ‘would be locked up in prison’ in the current climate.

She said at the time in 2018 that she feels for those speaking out about sexual abuse and harassment, and that it was ‘horrible, horrible, horrible’.

‘But what worries me is that some poor man at the end of his life will be hauled out and told that he jumped on somebody in the year BC,’ she added.

Dame Jilly, whose husband Leo died in 2013, said ‘on the whole’ men had been ‘very nice’ to her, adding in the Sunday Times interview: ‘I love being wolf-whistled. I know men shouldn’t jump on everybody. But I do think men have stronger libidos than women.’

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