Jilly Cooper’s Rivals has returned to our TV screens, bringing with it the stupefying scent of Vidal Sassoon hairspray and Dior’s Poison. Although those of us who were cash-strapped teens in the 1980s are more likely to find a version of Proust’s time-tunnelling madeleine in The Body Shop’s White Musk. When a friend’s daughter spritzed herself with some at Easter, I suddenly found myself babbling about Gatecrasher balls (I only went to one of those teen snog-fests, but it was in a purple toga) and slow-dancing to Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”, released the year I turned 18. “Oh my God, that sounds like so much fun,” she said wistfully and I replied, “OMG, it truly was.”
It took me a while to get up to speed with the home counties’ party crowd. Like Cooper’s naive heroine Taggie – who falls in love with the more fickle Rupert Campbell-Black – I spent my coming-of-age years feeling awkward and terminally virginal. Not helped by a late puberty and my sensible, publican mum, who thought makeup and fashion were overrated. My hormones only kicked in when I joined my school’s all-girls sixth form in 1984. Almost overnight, I went from being a studious, flat-chested bookworm to a young woman with an E-cup, determined to master the art of being a siren. The only problem was I didn’t smoke, was frightened of French kissing (looking back, so were the boys I kissed), wore crazy clothes from charity shops and had two left feet on the dancefloor.
Nothing deterred, I pointed myself at the coolest girls in my year who were beset with male attention, spritzed themselves with Givenchy’s Ysatis and got invited to thrilling parties. A couple had passed their driving tests and well-heeled Sevenoaks parents had helped them buy VW Beetles. These kookie cars became transports of delight, taking our gang to country pubs, Mon Cheri nightclub in Tonbridge Wells and St Julian’s Country Club, where we went skinny-dipping in the large pool after midnight. On a sunny weekend, we’d go driving up and down the King’s Road looking for dishy hooray boys. Although our school wasn’t properly posh (half the places were 11-plus or generous bursaries), there was an unspoken, Cooperesque code of conquest which meant you got more kudos for snogging a public-school boy than any other species of male. I’m ashamed to say, my inner democrat took a couple of years to surface. When one of my cool friends briefly bagged a scion of the Sackville-West family, who lived at nearby Knole, we all thought she’d won the jackpot. In retrospect, we’d all drunk too deeply of the Eighties bonkbuster champagne coupé, where upward mobility was the mantra for the time. We wanted good degrees, glittering careers and a tousle-haired Tonbridge schoolboy called Olly, Will or – yup – Rupert. To this end, we trooped off to the Penshurst point-to-point, where our prey could be spotted at beer tents and bookies – though the grammar school boys were generally more available and fun.
One blonde-tressed friend, whom I’ll call Emma, had perfected a look I’d call “country vixen”: tight-waisted Laura Ashley floral dresses that accentuated her bosom, worn with an angora ballet cardigan and cowboy boots. Young men swooned. Another pal with a dark pixie cut, kohl-lined eyes and Twilight Teaser lipstick resembled a young Winona Ryder in cigarette pants. On a more limited budget, I sported vintage 1950s dresses I’d picked up in the local Oxfam and wanted to discuss astral projection, having just read Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. I was told by one of the Tonbridge boys, “You’re different,” but he didn’t mean it in a good way.
I learnt a lot from Emma, whose parents were old-school medics straight out of Doctor in the House. They lived in a beautiful Queen Anne house and threw some of the best parties I’ve ever been to. They’d put up a marquee in the garden, stock limitless booze and insist on black tie, or fancy-dress. One of Emma’s two glam older sisters would bring down wild mates from St Mary’s medical school, who made martinis and partied ‘til dawn. This was where I first observed the common Eighties’ frock-mishap of breasts slipping free from strapless gowns, to everyone’s glee. Where I first boogied to Madonna’s “Material Girl” and The Communards’ “Don’t Leave Me This Way”. Any cupboard or loo door you opened would reveal a frantically necking couple. Sarah and I were amongst the youngest guests, so seen as Taggie-like prey by the male medics. I once copped off with a young doctor called Giles under the dining-room table and found afterwards that everyone had passed by to take a look. It may sound mortifying, but I soon learnt that old-fashioned, horsey, Labrador-owning country folk didn’t suffer from sexual embarrassment. To them, it was all good, clean fun and the attitude was infectious. Girls in this crowd were encouraged to use condoms or take the contraceptive pill and I remember finding a big jar of KY jelly in a bedside table – I had to ask Emma what it was used for. Her mother let us take over her kitchen and Aga and play-act being grown-ups by throwing dinner parties for our friends, themed as James Bond or “Decline of the Roman Empire”. I remember selecting a starter of broiled grapefruit with cinnamon sugar as it looked easy to prepare and burnt the whole damn lot. We compensated for the failure with tequila slammers and once again the party ended up under the table.
When I look at my sons’ generation and their complex dating etiquette, it seems encumbered by red tape compared to “Generation Jilly”. They barely drink, never dress up and think random expressions of sexual interest are deeply uncouth, especially if expressed by a stranger on the dancefloor. They’re used to incremental expressions of attraction from swiping right to meeting up for a coffee and setting personal boundaries, a process during which all desire may fizzle. I can’t help feeling there was something more haphazard and fun about our Eighties’ party snogging, over-dressing big hair and terrible hangovers. Even if it did come with a side-helping of sexism and handsy older men. Why else are we glued to Rivals? To bear testament to the fact, it was Wham-tastic FUN.
