Calories 1999 (continuing good work) number of times have read Bridget Jones’s Diary – 1 (v.g.) number of times roared with laughter while reading the book – infinite (excellent.)

Dear Diary, Have just finished “Bridget Jones’s Diary” – wonderful! Am just pondering what makes this such an excellent novel. Hmm…

Have got it! Aha! Ahahahahahahaha! Am marvellous! Am genius!

Don’t we think like Bridget every day? Bridget Jones – a typical Londoner, smoker, drinker with a boring dead end office job, living in a pigsty, in a life of calorie-counting, loveless, neurotic worrying. But this sounds like any 30 year old so why has this Helen Fielding novel not only been a best-seller, but one of the most successful films of 2001?…

Ooh, I know! (am truly excelling self). Because millions of females have burst into spontaneous applause with the joy of finding a pioneer for the “noughties”. Bridget, and her diary, saving women everywhere from desolate loneliness and (in her own words)

“being found two weeks later, half-eaten by an Alsatian.”

Those who have read this side-splitting story will have felt for Jones in her ‘difficult’ life, simply because they relate to every aspect of this diary. But how can the average female stand side by side with our heroine when her life is crazy and ours…well, isn’t. But if you get down to the basics, it’s easy.

Take family, that group of people you love to bits until, once again, they come out with the wrong thing at the wrong time. Like Mummy Jones, desperately denying that she is no longer twenty-one but in fact has another 34 years added on at least, competes constantly with friend Una Alconbury to be ‘hostess with the mostest’.

After returning with a “friend” from a trip with Una, Mrs Jones really has broken Colin Jones’s last nerve. A tender character, he meekly accepts that his wife has found another man, who turns out to be a criminal mastermind who doesn’t speak English. Still, love rules over all, and the Jones’s are thrown back together as “Julio” is hauled away to jail.

Something families are terribly good at is fixing your life up the way they would like to have their lives fixed up for them. Yet for once, Bridget finds her mother doing something wonderful for her. Fixing her up with a “super-dooper” job in television i.e. making a total idiot of yourself. Sit up Britain television company isn’t a terribly good station, and Jones often winds up looking stupid trying to climb back up a fireman’s pole. And as if nation-wide cringes aren’t enough, Bridget Jones is found doing a host of odd and awkward things, though through no fault of her own. By far the wittiest incident involves her being invited to a Tarts and Vicars party only without the tarts and vicars. Somehow, she has not been told that the party is just a normal garden event, and she turns up, bunny ears and all.

Nevertheless, this new career opportunity is a giant leap from her current job in publishing. She is surrounded by snoot champagne drinking, caviar eating “yars, yars, oh I quite agree” people, whom she despises, especially her boss, Perpetua, an utterly pompous tart. The only thing that keeps her there is (insert romantic sigh here) Daniel Cleaver.

It’s always funny how two men are always featured in these type of books – one the naughty man who shouldn’t be trusted, and the other the soulmate who just coincidentally has a top job lots of money and a heart of gold. And the chosen boyfriend – the wrong one of course, what do you expect?! Daniel, who falls in love with anything that looks vaguely single and female strikes Bridget as the fun-loving caring type. If you want to call watching cricket and two-timing you with a bronzed American goddess fun-loving and caring then good for you but you really should seek help. It takes Bridget months to realise that her lover is really a cheating, scheming rat, and even longer to get over him.

And who’s there to help? Shazzer, Jude and Tom. The twenty-first century friends who help Bridget get through life’s traumas. Shazzer is a female rights activist, Jude - man-hunter, and Tom is also a man-hunter. Comfort is found through a packet of Silk Cut, a bottle of Chardonnay (or three) and friends to make the world seem a better place and get drunk with. And Bridget cares equally about them. When Tom goes missing, Bridget is filled with terror as she pictures Tom being gobbled up by the evil Alsatian. Of course all that’s happened is that Toms minor plastic surgery to his nose has gone horribly wrong, but some wine and a good girly chat soon cheers everyone up.

And the other man? The hero, the saviour, the saint – Mark Darcy. A childhood friend of Bridget’s, he has turned into an unsociable, quiet mouse. Mark Darcy is just the kind of man every woman dreams of – but foolish Jones is too busy looking for Daniel-type figures to see it. Of course, no book is complete without a happy conclusion, and Darcy and Jones sail off together – or drive off to a posh hotel for Christmas dinner to be precise.

So as you can see, we are living the life of this heroine and whoever reads this sees themselves as Bridget and feels a whole lot happier. Written in a fun, comical way, this book stands out because the lead character is not a perfect Barbie doll with brains and attitude, but just the ramblings of a confused thirty year old who can’t seem to sort out her in-tray never mind her life. I feel this book was written for one purpose: to make you want to burn all those self help books and replace them with just one, which gives you a thousand answers to life’s little problems – Bridget Jones’s Diary. A truly remarkable book and really v.g.

So now I can start the sequel: Bridget Jones- the Edge of Reason. Sounds good. Will just start after I find scales…