In bed with Bridget

Evening Standard Review

BRIDGET JONES is back, with the publication today of Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason. At last we will discover what has happened to Bridget in the two years since she walked hand in hand with Mark Darcy into the four-poster suite at Hintlesham Hall (for Christmas mini-break) at the close of Bridget Jones' Diary. 

For a while it was possible to keep abreast with developments via her column in The Daily Telegraph, but since then anything could have happened, or at least one of two things. Will The Edge of Reason end with her getting married and having babies like normal (sorry) traditional older singles? 

Or will she enter the new millennium still scrambling for closure with Mark Darcy or possibly Daniel or some new talent at the office? Will she decide to have a baby with Gay Tom? Will she have taken up yoga and will it change her life? What's the deal, we want to know? And how does the story end? 

The answer, and indeed the whole point, is that Bridget has moved on precisely as much as we, her single female audience, have.

She has stopped buying Instants. 

She's getting drunk slightly less often (but not much), dialling 1471 much less often, on account of having a mobile so she can keep off the land line if expecting a call. She has candles in the bedroom and all over the place. 

She has had the builders in making serious alterations to her flat. She has dumped Caf Rouge in favour of 192 and now goes to Coins Caf (haunt of Notting Hill mafia, models etc.) for breakfast. She has access to Voyage cardigans though still shops at Jigsaw. She has been through the death of Princess Diana and had lots of thoughts on same. She has lusted after Prince William despite age. She has witnessed dawn of New Labour and had lots of thoughts on same. She has contemplated having a baby with Gay Tom and finds that her weekends are increasingly taken up with girlfriends' toddlers' birthday parties. She has travelled a bit, experienced a drug-related crisis (not wanting to give anything away), and had a crack at freelance journalism. 

Mark Darcy is still around, Daniel is still around, Jude, Shazzer, Tom, Magda, Vile Richard, Pretentious Jerome, Geoffrey and Una. The lot.

So no change - hurrah! Well what would you rather had happened? Bridget marries Mark Darcy and sets up home with him in Holland Park? Bridget checks into The Priory and emerges wearing Japanese clothes and expounding the evils of Chardonnay, Silk Cut, Instants etc. to begin New Life as best friend of Eric Clapton? 

Bridget realises pursuit of Mr Right fruitless expression of shallow purposeless existence, moves in with Jude and Shazzer and discovers fulfilment in making great TV programmes? No, no, no. This was never going to be, because Bridget is not just some fictional comedy character in manner of Mr Bean. Bridget is a somewhat exaggerated but otherwise accurate-to-the-letter example of a specific social group (thirtysomething professional single women) and have we got married to Mr Darcy? No. 

Have we given up the long nights in 192 with precarious wobbly visits to the downstairs loo? No. Have we all moved into separate little flats and plastered them with candles and throws and got builders to enlarge things and knock through kitchen walls even though the size of phone box? Yes.

If you are not one of us you could very well find the litany of hangovers, disastrous mini-breaks etc. rather tedious and tiresome. If, on the other hand, you are a single, thirtysomething freelance journalist, live within 250 yards of 192, have your breakfast in Coins (takeaway) shop at Jigsaw, own Voyage cardigan etc., you can't help but think Bridget is a creation of genius. 

Either Helen Fielding has Truman Show-style cameras in your flat or she is onto something. And as someone who is all of the above and also spent last Saturday night sharing a "family" room in a bed and breakfast with my parents (don't ask), I can confirm that the new unchanged Bridget is still, for some, an uncanny reflection of the modern urban experience. And to have your experiences unpicked and fed back to you as terrifically funny, life-affirming episodes is a lot better than assuming you are a freak. 

Cast your mind back to pre-BJ days. If one of the ranks of single thirtysomething females, the chances are you were not feeling like part of some happy, dippy club. 

Every so often you would open the paper to discover that, au contraire, you were one of a type who had been concentrating so ruthlessly on their careers that they had simply forgotten to find a decent man. Not just cold-blooded but careless.

Then there were the articles that proved you were single because you were in fact a man - you were working like a man, smoking and drinking like a man, your sexual organs were shrivelling up (that's smoking, mainly), you weren't just leaving it too late, you were unnatural, and your selfish, single lifestyle was turning you into The Thing. 

Pre-Bridget, single females of a certain age were society's whipping boys (in manner of Salem witches). We were the reason smug marrieds were smug (don't look, darling, there's poor can't-love, can't-beloved, must-only-earn-money-and-get-pissed type woman. Not all warm and giving and harmonious and part of social fabric like us). 

We knew, of course, that there were a million of us out there but naturally we assumed they were hygiene-obsessives or losers. 

And then Bridget came along, Bridget who was very attractive, with miniskirt-loving legs, good media job, flat in Notting Hill, loads of friends, but no husband. Bit Hopeless. Was Us!

Suddenly we were not freaks we were pioneers (in manner of Pankhursts) and part of a new social group that reflected our time as opposed to blindly going through the motions, living outmoded existence blinkered to social change (in manner of House of Lords). We were a laugh, we were a gang. 

The first Bridget Jones diary was dedicated to author Helen Fielding's mother. This one is dedicated To The Other Bridgets, because by now it is blindingly clear that Fielding has identified a phenomenon which will not go away and, if anything, is multiplying in strength. What's Ally McBeal if not Bridget made into loathsome bint? 

In the intervening two years Bridget's creator has had plenty of time to reflect on how Dr Frankenstein might have felt once the initial euphoria wore off. 

And we've all had time to wonder if maybe Bridget has had her day.

But rest assured. Until we grow up, get some food in the fridge and achieve inner poise, there's always going to be a place on the shelf for Bridget.