If you were ever in any doubt of the far-reaching cultural impact of Helen Fielding’s fictional diarist, Bridget Jones, I invite you to look no further than my own diary entries circa the early to late Noughties. The style – “Ran into Sam today: Doooom, hair was all mad peaks and horns! V. v. bad” – was ripped, wholesale, from my favourite unlikely romantic heroine (though my self-conscious attempts at emulating Fielding’s witty, feather-light prose fell woefully short of the original).
As a whimsical, unworldly young woman, I found my northern star in Fielding’s hilariously messy creation. She was a thrilling portal into what my future grown-up life might look like once I’d successfully moved to London, got a job in media, started devouring self-help books and drinking wine from a bottle instead of a box and, most importantly, got my heart well and truly broken by some proper, real-life boys. On second thoughts, make that men.
