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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think that no sane person would actually fall for Rupert Campbell -Black?

100 replies

Bigearringsbigsmile · 04/05/2019 12:05

Have just finished reading Riders for the nth time and I've got to say.. he really is repulsive.
He beats his horses.
He beats his wife.
He colludes in the rape of his wife.
He's foul to his son.
He ' s sexual incontinent and gives his wife gonorrhoea.
He thinks it's ok to have sex with 14 year olds.
His only humour is to make puns.
He bullies people all the time.
He's a tory.

Being rich and good looking surely doesn't over ride all that?

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 04/05/2019 14:37

One of the good things about these books is it gives brilliant evidence to support the fact that removal of women’s pubic hair wasn’t a routine “thing” until at least the late 1980s......Grin

Original poster
Bigearringsbigsmile · 04/05/2019 14:38

Even dino was a bit of a shit....saying to fen ' if you don't put out someone else will'

Malise was a good egg. I think he was the only decent man.

OP posts:
BertrandRussell · 04/05/2019 14:39

“You really really need to read riders!
It's like jilly gave him a personality transplant between the two books”

He was still utterly vile, though, just differently vile.

Original poster
Bigearringsbigsmile · 04/05/2019 14:40

Yes!!@ all of the bush trimming and spraying on of scent!

OP posts:
Still18atheart · 04/05/2019 14:44

Prefer RCB to Hengist B-T the head at Bagely hall. What that headmistress at the comp saw in him I’ll never know.

ElspethFlashman · 04/05/2019 14:47

And the last book! (whatever it's name was)

His supposedly very beloved wife of many many years goes off sex a bit and is a bit withdrawn and thin and instead of OH I DON'T KNOW TALKING TO HER, he has an affair with an employee and calls her "Buttercunt"

🤮🤮🤮🤮

Mammatino · 04/05/2019 14:50

I read rider's when I was 15 I agree I truly thought all the best ones had to be shits. My mum was always an RCB fan but even she gave up when he cheated on taggie whilst she had cancer in the last one. Utter shit head. Also making it out to all be Helens neurotic fault.... Then giving her to Rannaldinni who is an even worse shit and a peadophile.

TSSDNCOP · 04/05/2019 14:56

But he loved Badger.

I think the point is that he had to be utterly reprehensible. It’s fantasy.

I concur JC took it way too far in the last book, but I wouldn’t say no to RCB and Bas in my kitchen eating shepherds pie and drinking scotch.

Loubylouchirino · 04/05/2019 15:25

He is awful. A really repulsiveness character. Most of her men are, although Lysander Hawkley is alright, I think. And I really like Ferdie.

FenellaMaxwell · 04/05/2019 15:29

Ricky France-Lynch turned out well. I always liked Seb and Dommie Carlisle. The worst one is Georgie Maguire’s horrible husband guy - making out he’s some perfect, paragon of virtue, and trying to gaslight her. Eurrgghh.

Yamayo · 04/05/2019 15:35

Luke Alderton was lovely! Specially considering how vile his father and brothers were.
I also liked Dino... Blush

But no, never saw the appeal of RCB. Billy was ok until he raped Helen as she laid there crying...

MarieIVanArkleStinks · 04/05/2019 15:54

That rape scene in Riders was appalling. It horrified me even at the time, and felt like a betrayal of Billy's character - albeit he's far from perfect and isn't above treating women like crap. It wasn't the only rape scene either - Rory does it to Emily in the novel Emily - and shock horror, she falls for him afterward. (WTF? I'd have reported him to the police).

There was also a scene in Octavia where the promiscuous, hardfaced protagonist eventually falls for the rough male antagonist of the novel - AFTER they have a drunken showdown and he beats her senseless. Again, made me wonder at the time what kind of messages were being conveyed about women and their 'place'.

I've lately read some very disappointing comments made by Jilly Cooper in the media in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Looking back at some of these depictions, it should hardly come as a surprise that she holds such views. Leaves me wondering anew why I once liked her books. There's barely a redeeming character among the lot of them (not unlike 4 Weddings and a Funeral!).

User12879923378 · 04/05/2019 15:56

It sort of reflects how much less tolerant we've become of awful male behaviour. I love Jilly's books but Riders is nearly unreadable because of all the rapiness and the whole Rupert redemption thing really went off the rails in the last book. I love her writing, though, and she doesn't really pretend that the people in her books aren't awful, she just gives them happy endings because she's a social commentator in a particular class who's having to cram all of her wit and cleverness and sharp observations into a romance format.

Original poster
Bigearringsbigsmile · 04/05/2019 21:17

Like when tony baddingham beats up cameron cook and they don't phone the police and she says'i provoked him, you'd have done the same' to rupert.

OP posts:
GlacindaTheTroll · 04/05/2019 21:22

JC has said that TMWMHJ was written whilst her husband was having his affair. I've always thought there must be a lot of the Coopers in the MacGuire/Seymour household

GlitterPixie · 04/05/2019 21:23

He’s absolutely vile

CanoeDoYouThinkYouAre · 04/05/2019 21:25

Well, most of the women who fall for RCB aren't particularly stable. Helen and Cameron are the obvious examples but Taggie's upbringing must have left her vulnerable.

Ricky France-Lynch is my favourite. Properly decent man.

GertrudeCB · 04/05/2019 21:34

JC's best writing is when she is describing nature- stunning.

CanoeDoYouThinkYouAre · 04/05/2019 21:41

Nature and food Gertrude. All those descriptions of beautiful meals that the heroines are far too distressed to eat. Except Tory and her eleven stone bulk obviously.

AbsentmindedWoman · 04/05/2019 21:54

I'm almost afraid to read Polo and Riders again now as an adult! I loved them as a teen. Everyone is completely dysfunctional though.

I wished I was as good a showjumper as Fen for a loooong time Grin

Hazy memory and could be mixed up though - in terms of teenage key characters, Fen was the showjumper and Perdita the polo player, right?

Jengnr · 04/05/2019 22:01

Oh god, he cheats on Taggie? Noooooo!

Leeds2 · 04/05/2019 22:11

The man who played RCB in the TV series of Riders used to drop his child off at my DC's nursery.

CanoeDoYouThinkYouAre · 04/05/2019 22:13

Yes absentminded, Perdita is polo (and the far too good for her Luke) and Fen is showjumping.

kierenthecommunity · 04/05/2019 22:24

Remind me who the 14 year old was again...?

Luke, Lysander and Flora’s husband with Jilly’s strange idea of a Yorkshire accent whose name has escaped me seem to be the decent guys

Not fussed for Ricky, killing the child while drunk driving aside, he seemed to be a moody twat

Whatistheworldcominto · 04/05/2019 22:28

I didn't see the issues when I first read them about a million years ago now they make me cringe. I think an awful lot has changed. Not just how men's behaviour, sexual harrasment, assault, infidelity is viewed so much differently now. But also things like the treatment of the animals - a lot of what went on in Riders was accepted practice, it's not now, by a long shot. Jake was seen as some kind of wierd horse whisperer, but he used a lot of the techniques that are popular now.
I still read them because I love them, but I don't think they'd be published if written now, I do think it shows how things have changed.