However, the book was so jam packed with different personalities lurching from crisis to crisis, it lacked some of the warmth and depth of her previous work and made it hard to invest in the big storylines and relationships.

For five decades, she has produced gripping stories with exciting multi-layered plots and characters worth investing in. For all the ridiculous euphemisms about “otters diving into summer streams” and “leaning towers of pleasure”, Cooper is a master at serving relatability, long before it was an Instagram personality trait. Cooper – sorry, I mean Campbell-Black – has loads of ideas for improving Searston, for its fans as well as its players.Jilly has been a long-time favourite author and I had been looking forward to reading her new one ever since I had first picked up on its 'genesis'. Fun, frivolous, happy, sad - Cooper will never again reach the dizzy heights of Riders and Rivals, but I loved this, nonetheless. With help from the club's ravishing and adorable secretary, Tember West, Rupert sets out to mastermind Searston's rise to the top, starting with taking charge of the players - much to the fury of Searston's manager. Needless to say, Searston won’t struggle for long once Campbell-Black is in charge: up the tables they rise, eventually bagging themselves a place in the Premier League, and thus the opportunity to play in the Champions League against, er, Union Beethoven (a German side, natch). This book felt a lot shorter than Jilly’s other novels, and it lacked the weaving together of lots of different story threads.

I’ll probably finish it, but what a shame something I’ve been looking forward to for so long, is so disappointing. Last year it was announced one of Jilly Cooper’s best-known novels, Rivals (Transworld), would be adapted for a Disney+ TV series, as reported by the Guardian. Still, mega Jilly fans like me don’t really care - it’s like being back out and having fun with old friends.

Daughter Bianca persuades him to invest in a football club, Searston Rovers, and he becomes joint chair with his friend and fellow investor, former goalkeeper Valente Edwards.

This time set in the world of football, it brings back a slew old characters – notably Rupert Campbell-Black – from former stories. Her women might be unwashed and on a deadline, worrying about competing in professional sport while menstruating, farting with rage, peeing in sinks, navigating the agony of unrequited love, failing to get pregnant and, even, attempting suicide. It's a shorter read than some of her previous books, which landed up being a plus, and lots of references to characters from previous stories which I enjoyed. Riders at age 13 or thereabouts - I would not have been nearly so worried had she been reading Tackle! Critics might say she’s silly, sexist, and hardly Chaucer, but I say making women feel seen, hopeful, and happy takes a rare sort of genius.Frivolous on the surface, Tackle also tackles prejudices such as race, homo phobia and problems of poverty and loneliness. One imagines that the sensitivity readers, if indeed they existed, were in the end just as frustrated by Cooper as her supposedly sex-fixated editors – though if this was the case, I can’t sympathise at all. I already feel that I've said more than I can really be bothered to say which actually sums up how I felt about this book.