Good Morning America (ABC) – December 6, 1998 – Transcript.

AARON BROWN, Host: Just slightly pushing the season. This is our Scrooge segment. We couldn't resist a story that challenges the holiday cheer that advertises have been pushing since - well, since before Thanksgiving. Our staff is somewhat divided on this. Some get it, others don't. Are holidays a hazard if you're not coupled up? If you're not coupled up, that makes you a singleton, in HELEN FIELDING's book. That book would be "Bridget Jones's Diary," which has become a best seller here and in Britain.

And Ms. Fielding joins us this morning. It is nice to meet you.

HELEN FIELDING, "Bridget Jones's Diary": Thank you.

AARON BROWN: You must be having a ball.

HELEN FIELDING: Yes.

AARON BROWN: This is great.

HELEN FIELDING: I got lucky.

AARON BROWN: You got lucky indeed.

HELEN FIELDING: I did, yes.

AARON BROWN: The book has been a smash.

HELEN FIELDING: It has, and I never expected it. It's a book about being single. It's a book about the way women think they have to be perfect in every single area of their lives. I never thought women all over the world would latch onto it, but they seem to have.

AARON BROWN: And that's one of the things, I think, that is - First of all, I'm not sure men always get this stuff, so let me muddle a little bit here. But the idea that British women and American women and Japanese women and women in 25 other countries would all see the connection to this character is somewhat remarkable.

HELEN FIELDING: It's completely astonishing, especially in Japan, where I thought they can't identify with worrying about the size of your bottom, because they're all tiny, and they just eat little bits of fish. But I think it is this thing of, women are so bombarded with images of perfection that they think they have to sort of rush from the gym to the board room, home to the perfect husband and two children, and cook dinner for 12 people. And when Bridget Jones tries to do that, she just ends up standing in her underwear with wet hair and one foot in a pan of mashed potato.

And in a way, all that is kind of exaggerated at Christmas, because, you know, Bridget really feels that she should start - have finished her shopping by December the first and sent all the Christmas cards, and that she should end up sitting round a beautiful sparkly tree with her husband and children and little presents wrapped up with bits of cinnamon and fir cones. And in the oven, a sort of woodcock stuffed inside a goose stuffed inside a turkey. And it's just not going to happen.

AARON BROWN: Well, because nothing ever happens to Bridget the way it's supposed to happen, I mean...

HELEN FIELDING: No, it doesn't. And I think it's the thing that women can identify with, because especially at Christmas, you get the magazines and you go to the stores, and there's this sort of fancy world of the beautiful Christmas that you're supposed to create, whereas in fact, what the reality means is running around doing this sort of taste of others' exam, and trying to second guess all your friends and family and see what they would like for Christmas. And just bursting with the pressure of unperformed tasks, trying not to be hung over after too many parties.

AARON BROWN: How does Bridget defend herself, then, at this time of year? When someone says to Bridget, "Still no guy, huh?" how does she defend herself?

HELEN FIELDING: Well, I think the answer to that is, probably very badly. She just sort of mumbles an apology and feels sad. But that is the thing. Again, Christmas heightens the rest of the year. We know that everybody doesn't live in a nuclear family. We know that in England, a quarter of all households is single. And yet somehow, especially at Christmas, the world conspires to make you feel stupid.

Bridget's mother starts ringing her up August, bank holiday, asking when she's coming home for Christmas, and there's this feeling that if you're not actually in a marriage, then you haven't got any friends or responsibilities at Christmas time that you would want to deal with. So Bridget's mother thinks she should come home and be happy to spend the whole festive season sort of bent in a sleeping bag on a teenager's bedroom floor, and be happy to talk nicely to perverts with the word "Uncle" before their name while they stare freely at her breasts, and not complain about anything at all.

AARON BROWN: Do you ever get confused about who Bridget is, and who you are, and...

HELEN FIELDING: I do get asked quite a lot if I'm Bridget Jones, and I always...

AARON BROWN: I'm not asking you that, because that's dangerous. But, I mean, you're requiring yourself to think - to create a character who's alive, in a way...

HELEN FIELDING: Yes.

AARON BROWN:... and growing and changing and encountering. Do you ever get confused about who - which is whom?

HELEN FIELDING: It is confusing. It's the tendency to recycle everything that happens to you in life, which gets confusing. And so you don't know whether you're experiencing it. If something embarrassing happens to you, you don't know whether you're hating it or loving it, because you can put it into the column next week.

AARON BROWN: The book is a hoot.

HELEN FIELDING: Thank you.

AARON BROWN: It's terrific. And as are you. Congratulations, this must be just the time of your life.

HELEN FIELDING: It is great.

AARON BROWN: I hope it goes on for a long, long time.

HELEN FIELDING: Thank you.

AARON BROWN: Thanks, thanks for coming in.

©1998 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.