As Jilly Cooper ‘80s novel Rivals comes to Disney+ a look back at prolific royal scandals of the 1980s

The new Rivals series on Disney+ will feature eight episodes and they will all be available to watch in one go after it is released on October 18. The adaptation features Alex Hassell, who stars as former Olympian and Tory MP Rupert Campbell-Black.

Doctor Who star David Tennant plays the part of Rupert Campbell-Black’s neighbour Lord Baddingham whilst Poldark star Aidan Turner is Declan O’Hara. Former EastEnders star Danny Dyer plays the part of self-made electronics millionaire Freddie Jones.

In May 2024, in King Charles' first public investiture ceremony since his cancer diagnosis, Jilly Cooper was given a damehood. Dame Jilly Cooper is not only good friends with Queen Camilla, but the character of Rupert Campbell-Black was reportedly based on her ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles.

Dame Jilly Cooper wrote her novel Riders back in 1985 and the 1980s were of course a notorious time for many royal scandals. Although it wasn’t technically the 1980s, the killing ofthe late Queen's cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten by an IRA bomb on 27 August 1979, had a profound effect on the royal family, and in particular on King Charles, the then Prince Charles in the coming years.

The late Lord Mountbatten and the then Prince Charles had a close relationship and he was very much a mentor for the young Prince. At the time, Prince Charles was facing pressure to settle down and it was while at a party in 1980 that King Charles met the then Lady Diana Spencer.

Prince Charles had met Camilla Shand at a polo match when he was 21 years old and was instantly smitten. During their first meeting, she reportedly joked and said:“My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather. I feel we have something in common.” When Charles and Camilla first met, she was in an on-off relationship with Andrew Parker-Bowles who went on to become her husband in 1973.

Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July 1981 and their wedding was seen by a global television audience of 750 millionin 74 countries. The wedding of Charles and Diana was not the only royal wedding in the 1980s, Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson on 23 July 1986.

One of the big scandals of the 1980s was the show ‘It’s a Royal Knockout’ which was a charity event held on BBC 1, on June 19th, 1987. The likes of Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Princess Anne took part and celebrities such as John Travolta and Meatloaf also featured. Although the original idea of ‘It’s a Royal knockout’ was to make the royal family look more relatable, it spectacularly backfired.

It was also in the 1980s that the marriage between Charles and Diana began to fall apart and they were said to be living separate lives by 1986. Although it wasn’t until December 1992 that the then Prime Minister John Major announced that the couple had formally separated, this came after years of speculation over the state of their marriage.

It was also in the 1980s, specifically the year 1986 that despite both still being married, the then Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles began seeing each other again. Charles and Diana were not the only royal couple having ‘marriage difficulties’ Princess Anne and her husband Sir Mark Phillips announced they were separating in 1989.

In the spring of 1989 a British newspaper obtained stolen copies of letters written to Princess Anne by one of her equerries, an officer named Timothy Laurence. The letters were described as “too hot to handle.” In 1992, Princess Anne announced that she planned to marry Timothy Laurence.

It wasn’t only romantic scandals that the royals had to face in the 1980s but personal ones too. At around 7am on 9 July 1982, Michael Fagan managed to break into Buckingham Palace andentered Queen Elizabeth II's bedroom while she was sleeping. This created one of Britain's biggest security scandals.

The year before, Marcus Sarjeant, who was only 17 years old at the time, fired six blank cartridges at the Queen as she rode past crowds whilst on horseback during the Trooping the Colour. The shots startled the Queen’s horse, but she managed to get it under control.

Although the falling apart of the royal marriages in the 1980s demonstrated that the couples faced the same issues as everyone else, many saw it as the royal family being in disarray and a lot of people began to lose respect for them.