Keeping Up With The Bridget Joneses

TV Producer and columnist made good, Helen Fielding - best selling author - is now cracking Hollywood with her old pal Bridget in tow. Ayup! takes a peep in her diary.

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November 1999, London Hilton

15st, alcoholic units 18 (mostly Gratis Vino Tinto from the good looking waiter) , cigarettes 35 (v.bad), Calories 1547 including some wicked pate-de-foi-gras, Celeb count 35, including Salman Rushdie, Helena Bonham Carter, Harry Enfield, Earl Spencer and Elizabeth bloody Murdoch. Minutes spent trying to pluck up the courage to chat-up Helen Fielding, 160.

By gum, that lass doesn't half throw a good celebrity party! I must admit to having a huge crush on this Leeds born writer of best selling novels ever since she appeared on some loser book programme on Sky television a couple of years back. Utterly gorgeous. Left me wondering whether I was turning into some daft male equivalent of her Bridget Jones character. Then a trendy journo female friend flashed her invite to a Matthew Freud hosted bash to launch, 'Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason', Fielding's new instalment of her continuing diaries. What did I do. I begged her to take me.

So there I was at an impossibly posh West End London party in my two-bob suit feeling well out of place. I know, I should stick to the Beggar and Gentleman in Hoyland and stop hanging onto the coattails of glory. Especially when it's quite clear that Helen Fielding is heading into Jackie Collins celebrity immortality in a gold plated Winabego. I just sipped my Hilton Red and looked across a thousand-mile long room at the London glitterati, with Helen Fielding, BBC Comic Relief Producer and Independent columnist of old, at the centre of it all. My Ayup! Press Pass doesn't work south of Chesterfield so there's no big celebrity interview. I made excuses to my trendy friend and left. All Brut-ted up and nowhere to go.

New Years Resolution. Stop getting all worked up about Yorkshire accented socialites and wasting money at 192, hoping HF will walk in. Get yersen down to t' bozzer and pick up some young floozy reading Bridget Jones Diary....

Late February 2000, Hollywood Hills

13st5 (Vg), alcohol units 3 (also Vg), cigarettes 0 (Wow), Calories 255.

Helen Fielding is now living in California and London's Notting Hill trendies will just have to party without her. The reason for the move - apart from the weather is the task of writing the screenplay for Working Title's production of her second novel, Bridget Jones's Diary which will be directed by one of her friends, Sharon Maguire.

The Bridget saga has already moved on as our Heroine heads off to look for Leonardo DiCaprio clones in Thailand, gets conned and ends up in jail on drugs charges. It's a mix of daffiness and neurosis that had made the book a smash in over 30 countries and propelled the latest novel 'Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason' to the top of the best sellers lists. Quite whether there will be another episode in the life of our favourite thirty-something manhunter isn't clear. As both books borrow heavily from Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion were thinly veiled models) perhaps she'll attack the Bronte's next and get back to her Yorkshire roots.

A recent piece in the Los Angeles Times though portrays the writer completely at ease in the sunshine of Sunset Boulevard. "I love it here. Look at it, it's February. I swam this morning. It's half an hour to the beach and 40 minutes to the Wild West. I can be in the desert in 2 1/2 hours, and Mexico is two hours away on the plane. It's brilliant," she says. "Especially for a writer, to come to L.A., Well, even if things go wrong, there is so much to write about,". So no gritty novel set in your home town, Leeds, then...

 

 

 

 

Cause Celebs

So they've finally cast the role of Ms B. Jones. Have they cast a feisty northern lass? Have they buggery...

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The mad search for someone to play the role of Bridget Jones was beginning to get sillier than the fictitious lass's terminal search for Mr Right. Everyone from Kate Blanchett ('Elizabeth R') and Gwyneth Paltrow ('Shakespeare In Love') right down to the usual kooky Brits like Helena Bonham-Carter have been linked with the job. Eat your heart out David O Selsnick...

The man behind this eighteen-month trawl round the agents of London, Sydney and Los Angeles is Eric Fellner. Now he made Notting Hill and Four Weddings and A Funeral. This of course suggests that anything that can be done to break the movie in the states and make squillions of dollars will be done. So, no ciggie bingeing then. And the alcohol count, scratch card addictions and M&S Mini-Pizzas will be quickly drowned out by all manner of yank-friendly-isms.

The most obvious move would have been for Kate Winslett, which would keep the action on this side of the Atlantic, but get bums on seats in the Midwest movie halls. But she was too busy or too expensive or something. We at Ayup would have given it to plucky Jane Leeves (Daphne from Frazier) to free her from that stick-on northern accent she's been saddled with. However the producer, together with Director Sharon McGuire wanted "Funny".

This of course suggests that we're going to end up in Ally McBeal territory, with a stick insect legal-eagle wimping about, mooning after the Diet Coke Break man, and being totally un-cool without ever setting a hair out of place. She'll have a fab apartment the size of Flushing Meadow and the local bar will have Tina Turner doing turns. Unlike the Bridget Jones in the book, who is holed up in a one bedroom flat in North London, glued to Eastenders. The local Cafe Rouge would be full of Arsenal supporters and the M&S long closed and boarded up.

Well the Independent let the cat out of the bag and informed us that Jim Carey's squeeze Renee Zellweger will be doing the honours. Yes, her propping up Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire. A long cool blonde the right (or wrong, in BJ's case) side of thirty. Helen Fielding herself wanted an unknown by all accounts and in a way she's got one. Her Mr D'Arcy looks like it might be Colin Firth, though it could well be Jim Carey mugging away by the time the film rolls.

So will Bridget Jones metamorphose into a wise-assed skinny ribbed Noo Yorker, snogging and shagging her way through the eligables, whilst sitting in the deli with her Jane Austen waiting for Jerry Seinfeld? Shrieking quietly into her suchi whilst her vapid mates commiserate? Or will she still be chain smoking and on the phone to best mate Shazzer from a Highbury phone booth?

Vg or not Vg, that is the question.

Is this the face of Bridget Jones?

Renee Zellweger

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