Helen Fielding: the woman behind Bridget

iVillage: How did you get started writing books? What would you say is the best way to begin?
Helen: I've always wanted to be a writer, and I tried for years and years… I think newspaper journalism is great training for being a writer - you have to get used to being edited and having the piss taken out of you.

iVillage: Would you describe Bridget Jones's Diary as a parody of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen?
Helen: It's not a parody - I nicked her plot! I don't think she'd mind. Jane Austen is one of my favourite writers. She was very acute, very perceptive, and writing in close and honest detail about the tiny preoccupations of women's lives - preoccupations which speak of much larger social and human issues.

iVillage: To what do you attribute the book's mass appeal? Did you ever imagine that it would be the success it is?
Helen: Women are so naturally funny, ironic, and self-deprecating and I think they like books with that sort of tone. I think the book touched a nerve which is something about the gap between how women feel they are expected to be and how they actually are.
We are bombarded by so many media images of female perfection and conflicting roles - we end up feeling we should be like the girl in the 24-hour mascara ad, rushing from the gym to the board meeting and home to a perfect husband and children to cook dinner for twelve whilst looking like an anorexic teenage model. When Bridget tries it, she ends up in her underwear with wet hair and one foot in a pan of mashed potato wanting to shout 'Oh go f**k yourselves!' at her arriving guests.
As one woman said to me at a reading: 'It's a relief to laugh about your imperfections instead of secretly agonising about them.'