Jenni Murray on joining the mile high club
Binge-watching Rivals, our columnist is transported back to a time of sexism and stilettos – and a rather steamy encounter.
Image credit: Mark Harrison
Binge-watching Rivals, our columnist is transported back to a time of sexism and stilettos – and a rather steamy encounter.
Did I really want to go back to the 1980s and watch eight episodes of Rivals on Disney+? I’d found the books by Dame Jilly Cooper easy, hilarious reads, but I could guess what would be coming.
They were a perfect reflection of the time, long before #MeToo, when we women were trying to exercise and enjoy our newfound sexual freedom but also grappling with men who seemed to think that we were up for it, anytime and anywhere.
How many times had I been groped in the office and found the only way to deal with it was a firm, "No! get off!" and a threat to report their behaviour to their wives next time I met them in the bar? Generally, this technique worked.
Friday night came around. Rivals was released that day and some people who’d previewed it said it was hilarious. Maybe I’d give it a go.
Oh my! In the first few minutes, I was hooked.
I was there, back in 1980. A couple were joining the Mile High Club in the toilet of Concorde. Her red stilettos were like a pair I’d loved. She had red nails, as I’ve always had, and he had a fine bare bottom – always worth my admiration.
As they returned to their seats, she pulled down her skirt and smirked at the air hostesses and fellow passengers. He, to be revealed as the sex god of Jilly’s imagination, former show jumper Rupert Campbell-Black, sashayed down the aisle, the camera concentrating on his now clothed rear end.
There was the occasional cut to leering women, at last allowed to manifest their lustful admiration of such a fine backside. It seemed this series would be equal in its portrayal of the seductiveness of men’s bodies as well as women’s. A bit of 21st-century equality in the filming then.
I have to feel slightly ashamed now, although I didn’t then, to be so delighted by the Mile High Club story kicking off such a raunchy series.
Dare I tell you, I’m a member of the club? Oh, why not?
I’m a 74-year-old respectable women who’s had a nearly 40-year faithful marriage, but I did spend a phenomenally exciting few weeks in New York in 1980, the year of my 30th birthday.
I met a very handsome, very wealthy young man and embarked on a thrilling, inevitably short, affair. He took me everywhere in what was his hometown. We went to the theatre, the clubs and the best restaurants – places I would never have been able to afford.
Then he told me he had to fly to Boston for a business appointment and then on to Martha’s Vineyard to attend a party. Would I like to join him? That’s when I discovered he’d be flying his own plane. Game for any new thrill, I agreed. How could I say no?
We were in the air when he asked if I fancied becoming a member of the Mile High Club.
It was something of a trend at the time, hence, no doubt, its appearance in the opening of Rivals. But that was in Concorde as she was about to break the sound barrier. Rupert Campbell-Black was not flying the plane. How could my man perform, as well as keep us safe in the air and fly in the right direction?
He assured me I had no need to be concerned. He’d put on the autopilot, and we had plenty of time before we reached Boston. There was not a lot of room in a tiny cabin designed for only the pilot and one passenger, but we were young and fit and we managed. We shared a fag as he took over control of the plane and we laughed at being fully paid-up members of the very exclusive club!
Ah yes, the fag. I stayed with Rivals to the end, amazed at how liberally everybody drank huge alcohol shots and always smoked.
I remembered what it was like for a woman in a powerful position to be treated as a secretary, and the manipulative bosses who assumed any woman who wanted to get on was a willing bit on the side, as well as the cruel class system that ridiculed any working-class woman trying to fit in.
The 1980s was a great time but also an awful time. Snobbery and sexism were rampant, and Jilly knows about the pleasures and pains of the period more than most. I’m thrilled that at 87, she’s controlled her product and has a runaway success.
She’s one of the nicest women I’ve ever met, and she provided me with a gripping few hours of binge entertainment.
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