Rivals' secret royal connection revealed as Rupert based on major socialite
ok.co.ukSteamy TV series Rivals, currently streaming on Disney+, has already drawn in a huge audience with its raunchy sex scenes, deliciously camp 1980s-set plot, and a starry cast that includes David Tennant, Emily Atack, Aidan Turner and Danny Dyer.
Winning much of the praise and flashing most of the flesh is actor Alex Hassell as playboy ex-Olympian turned Tory politician Rupert Campbell Black, a character who is loosely based on a real life gentleman with a royal connection.
Dame Jilly Cooper wrote the book Rivals back in 1988, and Rupert appears in her Rutshire Chronicles series of romance novels that began with Riders in 1986.
She has admitted that a few men inspired the character of Rupert, who in the Rivals TV series we first meet emerging from an X-rated session in a Concorde aeroplane toilet with a gossip columnist, then later playing naked tennis with a married neighbour.
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