Best-selling author Jilly Cooper believes every woman should have a Lysander.

He's the handsome, upper-crust hero of a new ITV mini-series, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous who is employed by neglected wives to do exactly that. The series, which started last night, is based on Jilly's blockbuster novel of the same name.

"It's like having a dishwasher--a wonderful idea," she quips, as she welcomes OK! for lunch at her home in London's Fulham. "At certain times in life, it's very nice for people to suddenly have a Lysander to come and cheer them up," she adds.

"My husband Leo says you can always tell if a woman is having an affair because they have a kind of sheen which makes their eyes brighter--rather like a dog on Bob Martin's tablets."

Also invited to Jilly's lunch party are actor Stephen Billington, who plays the notorious Lysander in the current TV adaptation. "Stephen is absolutely charming, but he's not quite Lysander because Lysander is pig thick--but adorable with it."

Jilly's property developer son, Felix, 28--the inspiration behind another of the series' characters, estate agent Ferdie--and his girl-friend Lizzie Moyle, 24, complete our party. Today we're eating smoked salmon, pâté and cheese. "We've got the best delicatessen in the world around the corner....."

Jilly's beautiful four-bedroom Victorian home was bought on impulse during the filming of Jilly's earlier best-seller, Riders. "I went and met all the cast for the TV series and got so excited because they were all taking it all so seriously," remembers Jilly. "Then I got very drunk at lunchtime and Felix and I went out and bought this house." Just like that.

"I liked this house because it was grotty. Absolutely falling apart." Thanks to Felix's do-it-yourself skills, it's already doubled in value from £189,000 she paid for it. Combined with the earnings from her current best-seller, Appassionata, this must make her bank manager very happy.

Yet, despite turning 60 this year, Jilly shows no signs of slowing down. She's currently hard at work on the sequel to Appassionata, called Who Killed Ronnaldini?, and says she's been so busy for the last two years, she's had little time to entertain in her two beautiful homes--the other being a 15th-century converted chantry in Gloucestershire.

So what drives her? Well, there's always next year's tax bills looming. "I also have an awful lot of people looking after me and I have to pay them," says Jilly.

Nowadays, she admits, fresh ideas for her novels' fabled sexy contents are more thin on the ground. "I'm getting so old now I'm actually running out of inspiration. But obviously I have girlfriends that talk," she grins.

Does she ever get bored of writing about sex? "Oh no! If you're in a jolly larking mood, it's great. You don't think: 'Gosh, I must think up some new sex. Shall I put them in rubber and have them cavorting around the mulberry bush?' Remember, I'm writing a novel so I'm caught up with these characters."

Jilly has spent 25 years writing about love and life, but feels things have barely changed since she started. She is distinctly unimpressed by the Nineties phenomenon of the caring, sharing 'New Man'.

"I think something terrible has happened to English men because of the women's movement. They are very insecure," she says. "I'd like to buy about a million men from Russia--really sexy Cossacks--and bring them over to England."

It comes as no surprise, then that Jilly's favourite male creation is lothario Rupert Campbell-Black, star of her novels Riders and Rivals. And yet, she says, "I'd hate to be married to him. Leo's much kinder and nicer."

He's also a marvellous cook, says Jilly, which helps when it comes to entertaining friends like ex-Chancellor Norman Lamont, Alan Clark and Camilla Parker Bowles.

Of ex-Tory MP Alan Clark--who could be a character straight out of one of her books--she says: "He and his wife come to Goucester a lot. They're divine--so funny."

Close friend Camilla gets the ultimate endorsement: "She loves dogs," says Jilly. "Mad about them. Everybody who meets her here just falls in love with her. She's very funny and terribly modest and sweet. Really unpretentious."

You can't help wondering if any aspects of Jilly's friends' lives turn up on the pages of her novels. Lysander, she admits was based physically on her nephew Henry--'a fantastic beauty'--who is now a venture capitalist in his thirties. "All my wonderfully wild girls have a bit of my daughter Emily in them as well."

But the books, she insists, are not based on real people, although, "I get ideas from them," she says. Yet it is hard to watch The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous without wondering how much her own painful marriage hiccup in the early Nineties--when news broke of Leo's affair--influenced her. Understandably, it's a subject Jilly does not want to discuss.

But judging by her appearance, life has certainly been kinder to her in recent years. Although she's now entitled to a free bus pass, she has the figure of a woman half her age and a sexy halo of silvery blonde hair that is distinctly un-OAPish.

"I can look good when I'm done up," she admits. "But I think anyone can. I'm basically a very happy person and I don't have to be anyone else. I live at home and, if I want to start work at 11 o'clock, I can. It must be a terrible pressure to have to go to the office."

Hitting 60, says Jilly, is no worse than hitting 50 or 40--"there is life afterwards."

 

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