Young people are not only having less sex than their parents' generation did at their age, but are apparently less entertained by it in popular culture too. A recent study by the Center for Scholars and Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA said found that half of Gen Z would prefer to see less sex on screen and more platonic relationships. Movies already have fewer sex scenes. Yes. She’s old and grey now, like me. Her type comes up rather grey but I’ve written every book since Riders on her. She’s a star, is my Monica. Gosh no! For a start, I live in rural Gloucestershire, so I don’t meet my noisy mates any more. People who every time they open their mouth, you want to write down what they say.

Not much. Disney want me to keep my trap shut. But I’ve seen the first episodes and it’s wonderful.

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The series is being written by Dominic Treadwell-Collins, who was an executive producer on A Very English Scandal and EastEnders, and Olivier award winner Laura Wade, and who wrote the screenplay for the film The Riot Club. She is to humans what David Attenborough is to animals’ … Jilly Cooper at home. Photograph: Thousand Word Media/Alamy Always wear cashmere Daisy Buchanan, author of books including Insatiable and Limelight, host of the You're Booked podcast and Jilly Cooper superfan, first discovered the writer as a teenager. "I think I was about 13 when I fell in love with Jilly's books," she tells BBC Culture. "Riders and Rivals were being passed around at school, almost 20 years after they were first published, which is a testament to her power. Her stories are dramatic, extravagant, escapist tales – but while she sets her books in glamorous worlds, her characters are so vulnerable, loveable and human. It's only in Jilly-land where you get heroines who triumph while feeling self-conscious about their spots."

But while there is much to celebrate in Cooper's portrayals of sex, it wasn't always fun – or consensual. "There are rapes that happen in Jilly's books, and it is very rare that the rapist has any kind of comeuppance," says Burge. In one particularly disturbing scene in Riders, Rupert coerces his wife Helen into a sexual act. "It's a really horrible scene," says Burge. "Those aspects are difficult to read now."

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Cooper with the stars of the Disney adaption of her novel Rivals, from left: Alex Hassell, Danny Dyer, David Tennant, Aidan Turner. Photograph: Disney+

I used to say that the literary world is divided into two sets: people like me who long for a kind word in the Guardian and people in the Guardian who long for my sales. Isn’t that awful? Conran's classic Lace (featuring an infamous goldfish scene) was especially explicit about women's right to sexual pleasure. "There's a character who has never had an orgasm before and then she has a male partner who basically says: 'you have as much right to an orgasm as anyone else'," says Burge. "They talk about it and communicate in a very modern way for a book published in 1982."When you think everyone is fantastically attractive, that helps. It’s 38 years since Rupert appeared in Riders. He is now 67, which means we met him when he was 29, although he came off more like 35. Never mind; age cannot wither him, being the handsomest man in the world. Of course, everyone biologically related to him, children and grandchildren, is outstandingly beautiful, as is his wider circle and household. It would besmirch his supremacy were he to stand next to anyone not handsome. What readers might notice slightly less of though, is the actual sex. It's still in there, but somewhat tamer than her earlier books (even though she says her publishers pushed her to include more). Cooper has said she finds it "quite difficult" to write sex scenes now. Truth be told, he has been having a tantrum since he washed the vaginal deodorant out of Helen’s privates in 1985. He is always sleeping badly, and sustaining injuries, and pretending they don’t hurt, and crusading to victory (polo) with a dislocated shoulder, and covering his pain with stoicism and more tantrums. In Cooper’s telling,this is incredibly hot and he is exactly the kind of man you want in your corner (and four-poster bed). It sounds puritanical. Why feel guilty about pleasure? But I get lovely letters from teenagers saying they read Riders underneath the bed covers. It’s wonderful to give people guilty pleasures in that way. A giddy, sexy, exuberant romp of a story...a total tonic, offering the sort of glorious escapism we're all desperately in need of' - Daisy Buchanan