Entertainment

Jilly Cooper, 80, explains why she's been using dating app Tinder

Jilly Cooper, 80, explains why she's been using dating app Tinder
Jilly Cooper, 80, explains why she's been using dating app Tinder

Novelist Jilly Cooper has said she is on dating site Tinder – but only for research purposes.

The author, 80, famous for her racy novels, has set her next book in the world of football.

Jilly Cooper (Joel Ryan/PA)

She told the Daily Mail she had tried speed dating, as well as Tinder.

“Swipe left and right for like and not like. I loved it!” Jilly said.

The writer, whose husband Leo Cooper died in 2013, said: ”I also tried speed dating, which was new to me, where you have to decide if you like a man in four minutes.

“In my day it was the four-minute mile, now it is the four-minute male.”

The Duchess of Cornwall with Jilly Cooper (Matt Cardy/PA)

Asked about using Tinder, she said it was “only for research purposes because I want people to do it in my next book. They are all going to flick away like mad”.

But she added that she was not really looking for love again.

“I think I am a bit old to subject myself to somebody, quite honestly. I have to take my teeth out at night, and that wouldn’t be much fun for anyone,” she said.

Jilly, whose previous books have been set in the upper-class worlds of racing and showjumping, recently told how she thought ”I only have one more novel in me”.