Sir John Madejski pays tribute to Jilly Cooper
The author visited Reading FC while researching one of her novels
Last updated 6th Oct 2025
Former Reading FC owner Sir John Madejski has been speaking to us about his friendship with author Jilly Cooper.
Dame Jilly passed away aged 88 yesterday. He told us how he got to know her:
"I was introduced to Julie Cooper by Andrew Parker Bowles (the Queen's former husband) because she was going to write this book about football and she wanted to you know sort of talk to people that knew a bit about football and Andrew being an acquaintance of mine put her in touch with me,
"She subsequently came along and came to several matches here and even came to Wembley with us in the playoffs but she was the sweetest woman and she really was such a charming lovely lady and I've got so many Memories of her and indeed I've got a lovely little section on my mantelpiece it's all the cards she sent to me and she was very fond of animals and dogs in particular. And you know when she came, she bought me a little gift, or sometimes a large gift actually, but she was just such a charming, wonderful real person and such a positive happy Lady and of course we're all terribly excited when she wrote her book 'tackle' which is about football and I got a very good mention in the section about people that helped and so did one or two other people at the football club."
Sir John says she was always making him laugh:
"Oh yeah, she had a wicked sense of humour and she was always scribbling always making little scribbles about everything because I'm sure that a lot of what she wrote about she picked up on the way through through life. But as I say, she was the most charming person you could possibly wish to know."
And he says he will always remember her visits to Reading FC:
"Oh, she loved it. She loved it. You know in the acknowledgements in 'tackle' you'll see she talks about coming to Reading and the wonderful time she had so yeah I know she just loved every moment.
"She was so real, a fantastic lovely lovely lady I'm gonna miss her greatly because you know she was going along pretty well actually I know she 88. She's getting on a bit but to die from having a fall is just very very tragic and enormous shock to us all so I'm very deeply upset about her passing I really am she was such a good friend."