Bridget Jones's Diary was an overwhelming and almost instant success, capturing the plight of the modern woman in a remarkably familiar and endearing light.

Readers everywhere saw flashes of themselves as they followed the delightfully dysfunctional Bridget through performance anxiety at work,
ever-failing diets and a longing for love.

That success was compounded by the hugely popular film of the book, starring Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, and the film version of the second book, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, is at last on release from 12 November.

As we welcome the further adventures of Bridget Jones, her creator speaks to iVillage.

iVillage:Bridget Jones's Diary is a hilarious book. Have you ever had any of the funny experiences you write about, or did you just make it all up as you went along?
Helen: I take some things from real life and exaggerate them - my friends are very good and will always ring when something useful happens.

iVillage: What provoked you to write a book about real life - all the seemingly little trials and tribulations that women go through? Were you ever nervous that such a topic wouldn't be accepted by readers?
Helen: I was asked to write a newspaper column as myself. I said no because I thought it was hopelessly exposing and embarrassing. But I offered instead to make up a comic, exaggerated fictional character - one that I'd been playing with for a sitcom: the girl who's the embodiment of the banana skin joke, optimistic, with grand aspirations: 'I'm not going to sleep with him' - cut to her in bed with him. The irony is that everybody thinks she's me anyway.
I thought I'd be sacked after six weeks for being so trivial - writing about why it takes three hours to get out the door in the morning - but then the column became a huge success. That's when I said, 'It's me! It's me! I wrote it!'

iVillage: There have been several reviews stating that Bridget represents the antithesis of the feminist cause and that women should NOT think her behaviour appropriate. How do you respond to such criticism? Do you feel Bridget should change in order to reflect the feminist agenda?
Helen: I think that if you're not a fan of irony as a form of expression, then a book that contains the line 'There's nothing so unattractive to a man as strident feminism' is going to make you cross. I also think that if we can't have a comic female character, if we can't laugh at ourselves without having a panic attack about what it says about women, we haven't got very far with our equality.

iVillage: What would you say was the most memorable part of writing your book and getting it published?
Helen: Travelling to Japan on my book tour. Even there - where they just eat little bits of fish - women identify with 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.'