{"id":172294,"date":"2025-12-01T10:00:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T15:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=172294"},"modified":"2025-11-26T16:48:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T21:48:04","slug":"catching-up-with-helen-fielding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/01\/catching-up-with-helen-fielding\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching Up with Helen Fielding"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photograph by Romy Curran.<\/p><\/div>\n

Bridget Jones made her first appearance in February 1995, <\/em>complaining amiably about her publishing job and obsessing over her rakish boss in a diary column in London\u2019s <\/em>Independent newspaper. \u201cLast Tuesday, at the Cheapskate’s Wine Guide launch, weeks of flirtation appeared to climax. When the others were boring on about Stephen Fry [\u2026] Daniel moved behind me and murmured, “So \u2026 will I see you?” and then, more quietly, “I mean \u2026 see you?” – so horny.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The writer of the column, Helen Fielding, had already published one novel, <\/em>Cause Celeb, but it was Bridget\u2014a worrier, a charmer, an expert at having a good time\u2014who would make Fielding famous. The diaristic column, published anonymously at first, was a smash hit. Readers responded immediately to Fielding\u2019s vivid portrait of single life in nineties London. Her novel <\/em>Bridget Jones\u2019s Diary\u2014whose structure and characters were based loosely on those of<\/em> Pride and Prejudice\u2014was published less than a year after that first column, and Bridget became a kind of generational touchstone, a beloved figurehead and a lightning rod for critique. Fielding, who was thirty-seven, originally from West Yorkshire, and still working at the newspaper, meanwhile became almost as famous as a writer can get.<\/em><\/p>\n

What is so striking, reading those very first columns thirty years on, is that it\u2019s all there, right from the beginning: the levity and humor, even the influence of Austen. (Even before Fielding named her heroine\u2019s love interest after Mr. Darcy, Bridget was moodily watching the BBC adaptation of<\/em> Persuasion and concluding that she<\/em> was Anne Elliot.) We can see Bridget\u2019s combination of self-awareness and obliviousness, her cheerful resignation about the possibility of behaving like an idiot again sometime soon. Her voice is so instantly recognizable that one might forget that she didn\u2019t always exist, that Fielding made her up, one day in the nineties. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I caught up with Fielding about her writing life and the years since those early columns. She has gone on to write four more books\u2014three more Bridget Jones novels and one standalone spy novel\u2014and to work on the wildly popular film adaptations. Over Zoom, we talked about the role Austen has played in her work, her penchant for and methods of social observation, and what it\u2019s like to have an alter ego. She is thoughtful and funny, with a finely tuned sense of the absurd.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Did you always know that you were going to be a writer?<\/p>\n

HELEN FIELDING<\/p>\n

Words were the thing felt I had a facility with. I knew what to do with them, which I didn\u2019t feel with a lot of other things\u2014cooking, driving, anything practical, I wasn\u2019t very good at. But I always wrote, starting when I was very small. I remember I put the word immobilized<\/em> in an essay and a teacher at school wrote, \u201cWhose word is this?\u201d\u2014implying that my parents had done my homework. I used to read a lot. Just anything. I liked words and all my family were all very funny, so we were always fooling around and making jokes. I grew up in the industrial north, it was quite sooty and dark. I\u2019d read Jackie Collins and think, Oh, if I was a writer, I could have a swimming pool and be free and not have to go to work and I could go live somewhere hot.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How do you write? Do you write every day?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

I will if I\u2019m in full-on mode. With a novel, there are some phases where you\u2019re just thinking and gathering material and then it\u2019ll get a momentum. I tend to do an old-fashioned working day, about ten till six. I don\u2019t work in the evenings, and I don\u2019t work on the weekends, so my mind knows, Okay, it\u2019s time to do the writing now. When you get deep into a novel, into a flow state, it\u2019s really nice and you don\u2019t want to stop doing it. But before you get to that point, it\u2019s harder. I always feel a bit unsettled if I\u2019m not writing regularly\u2014it\u2019s like I haven\u2019t got my handbag or something.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you sort of know what a novel is going to be before you start? Or is the gathering of the material what gives it shape?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t write in a linear way. I\u2019m quite disorganized. I use a program called Scrivener, where I keep a lot of files. There\u2019s a lot of social observation to the way I write, so I\u2019ll keep a file of funny things that have happened or funny things people have said, or one called \u201cEnvy,\u201d say, which is just looking at that as a sort of trait. And then I\u2019ll say to myself, Look, you\u2019ve really got to stop just mucking around like this and assemble it, see how it\u2019s all landing. And then up it cranks up a notch.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

What are some other things you\u2019re storing in your Scrivener files?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Just little moments of social observation. Someone once came up to me in the shop and held up a blue sweater. She said, \u201cDo you think this looks too inky?\u201d I just thought that was such a funny thing to say. What does she mean, \u201ctoo inky\u201d? How can a blue be too inky? Or a while ago, the government was practicing an emergency alert, so everyone\u2019s phones were set to go off at three. So I just walked past the pub to see what would happen. The answer was\u2014nothing. Everyone was sitting outside the pub and everyone\u2019s phone started blaring. Somebody said, \u201cOh, the aliens are coming,\u201d and burst out laughing, and then everyone just carried on being in the pub. Things like that, I suppose, I would come home and just jot them down. That\u2019s the way you give the texture to the thing, these sort of mad things that happen.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading your old columns in the Independent<\/em>. In one of the very first, before Mark Darcy\u2014Bridget Jones\u2019s great love interest\u2014has even appeared, Bridget is watching the BBC adaptation of Persuasion<\/em>, and she\u2019s thinking about Daniel Cleaver, the cad. She says, \u201cI think I am Anne Elliot anyway. I noticed it was only when someone else was after Anne that Captain Wentworth came running. How can men be so obvious? \u2026 Let him think I have gone to Lyme, fallen on my head and am being tended by Dr Rogers. But then wait: Anne Elliot did not play games but was modest, honest and true, and certainly did not sit smoking and smirking at the answerphone.\u201d It seems as if you had an identification with Jane Austen from the very inception of Bridget.<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Jane Austen was the first author I read who wrote realistic women. I was probably fifteen when I read Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. I immediately loved Elizabeth Bennet because she was so sparky and so intelligent and so brave and full of integrity and wit and irony and brio and fun. She was a real feminist, Jane Austen. Everyone thinks of her as a tragic, barren spinster, but she could have married. She turned down someone called Harris Bigg-Wither, not because of his name, but because she just didn\u2019t really fancy him or like him. It would\u2019ve saved her family. But she had the brio to think, I\u2019m not going to do this. I\u2019m not going to marry someone I don\u2019t like, and I am going to hold out. And she knew she was a good writer and she thought she could make a living doing it. She wrote very well about the economic powerlessness of women at that time. Unless they had private means, they just had to wait to be chosen by a man. And their only power was to say no, which she did, and she got Elizabeth Bennet to do that too. I admire the precision of her dialogue and her humor and her characters. There are always little side characters or conversation. Even though she\u2019s ostensibly writing about ladies sitting around doing embroidery, wanting to shoot themselves in the head out of boredom, she\u2019s actually telling you about society at the same time. In one of her letters to her sister, she writes, \u201cNext week shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.\u201d<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The parallels between the first Bridget Jones novel and Pride and Prejudice<\/em> are striking. Did you know from the beginning that it would be a framing device, or did that idea come to you as you wrote?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

I suppose what happened was that I was writing the column and then the BBC started putting out its adaptation with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, and the country was gripped. On Sunday nights, the streets were quiet, everyone was watching it, and everyone was in love with Colin, including me. So I then introduced a character into the columns who was basically Mr. Darcy. The columns then started following the story of Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. At the same time, I was working on a White Lotus<\/em>\u2013y novel about cultural divides in the Caribbean\u2014I think it was called \u201cTrouble in Paradise.\u201d It was the second novel I\u2019d written, and the first one had been set in a refugee camp in East Africa, which I often point out if people say Bridget\u2019s a bit silly. I say, \u201cWell, I did write a novel set in a refugee camp, but nobody bought that one. So there you go.\u201d As I got further into doing the columns, my publisher said, over drinks, \u201cOh, why don\u2019t you do a Bridget book instead?\u201d And I said yes, because I really didn\u2019t like the book I was working on and I did enjoy writing the columns. I hadn\u2019t got a plot, though, so I thought I\u2019d just steal Austen\u2019s. It was a conscious theft, I guess. I don\u2019t think she would\u2019ve minded, and anyway, she was dead. It\u2019s a really, really good plot. You cannot screw that plot up. There have been so many adaptations, Pride and Prejudice<\/em> this, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies<\/em>, Mr. Darcy, Vampyre<\/em>. As long as you stick to what she did, you can\u2019t muck it up.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I loved the bit, in the second novel, when Bridget has been dumped, and her friends bring the video of the BBC Pride and Prejudice<\/em> to her flat, as if it\u2019s got medicinal properties.<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

You know, when I was still working as a journalist, the Independent<\/em> asked me if I\u2019d like to go to Rome to interview Colin Firth. We hadn\u2019t cast him in the film yet\u2014there wasn\u2019t a film at that point, because the novel was quite a slow burn, it wasn\u2019t like it was an overnight success\u2014but he knew about Bridget and about her obsession with Mr. Darcy. So I went and met him in a caf\u00e9 in Rome, and we had lunch and we had wine, and then we went to another restaurant and switched characters, so he turned into Mr. Darcy and I turned into Bridget. I\u2019ve got the tape of it somewhere, I must find it. We were laughing so hard. He was trying to talk about Nietzsche, and this film he\u2019d made that was something to do with sphagnum moss, and I just kept bringing it back to the wet shirt in Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. We were really, really laughing.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

When did you realize that Bridget Jones was going to be a big deal?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

I realized that the column was funny six weeks into writing it, when my friend Tracy, who was Jude, said, \u201cHave you read this column?\u201d And I said, \u201cYeah, what do you think?\u201d And she said, \u201cI think it\u2019s really funny.\u201d Then I thought, Oh, okay, it must be funny. Then the paper started to get letters about it. Then people started to talk about it in London, and people were reading it on the tube and waiting for the paper to come out.<\/p>\n

So there was quite a bit of fuss about it, but it was only really when the book came out and the paperback went up to like six, five, four, three, two, one in the Sunday Times<\/em> list that it suddenly became this huge, huge thing. I mean, it was a great thing to happen, but it was also something that I wasn\u2019t prepared for, because I was used to being a journalist rather than the object of journalists\u2019 attention. The classic thing, which has always summarized how messed up it is to become well known, was coming back to my flat one evening and seeing a photographer on a motorbike outside and just thinking, Oh, can\u2019t you leave me alone? This is intolerable. And then I realized it was a pizza delivery man, and I was disappointed. It was always going to be messy\u2014too much attention, too little attention. You\u2019re never going to be all right with your narcissism after something like that has happened.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I was thinking of this bit in the first novel when Natasha, who is the Caroline Bingley figure, says, \u201cI always feel with the Classics people should be made to prove they\u2019ve read the books before they\u2019re allowed to watch the television version.\u201d She says that because she\u2019s a bitch, but there\u2019s also something there about the ownership that people feel over the books they really love. How do you respond when other people feel like they own Bridget Jones?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Well, what happens is that everyone thinks they can write Bridget. Because it\u2019s a franchise now\u2014it\u2019s four films\u2014but what\u2019s the franchise? There are no fast cars or things blowing up or superheroes or wizards. There\u2019s just one woman and her perspective and tone and everyone thinks, Oh, I want to do that, I know how to do it. But it is a very specific point of view, and it is very, very easy for it to be off. It looks easier to write than it is, especially the jokes. I think the jokes usually come from the theme. In the first book I didn\u2019t really know what the theme was, but now I\u2019m a little bit more aware that that is what\u2019s going to make your book work or not work. It\u2019s not the same as the story or the plot, it\u2019s, What is it actually about? Which is, the gap between how she feels she\u2019s supposed to be and how she actually is.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

She\u2019s got these plans, all these ideas about how she\u2019s going to manage her life and about how she\u2019s going to be, and each of the diary entries begins with a little list of all the ways she\u2019s trying to control herself. Why do you think the diary form works so well for you? What does it allow you to do as a writer?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good in that it\u2019s quite short\u2014people like to read little chunks. I suppose it\u2019s also about how it allows me to get mixed up with tense, the way I can move between the retrospective tense and the present tense. \u00a0Because sometimes I\u2019d have her writing and then she\u2019d fall over while she was writing, and then I\u2019d think, Well, wait, how could she still be writing when she\u2019s fallen over? Quite a lot of it is just stream of consciousness. She might write at 2 P.M.<\/small>, \u201cI\u2019m not going to have anything to eat today, I\u2019m on a diet.\u201d 2:05, \u201cOh, I think I\u2019ll have a bit of ice cream.\u201d Just going through the minutiae. Once, I wrote an entry about why it takes three hours between waking up in the morning and leaving the house, going through what you actually might do in those three hours. To get there, I did just log why I was always late for work and what did happen in that time frame.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

One of the great things about the diary form is that there\u2019s often a gulf between what a character thinks is going on and what the reader knows is going on. The same might be true for Bridget\u2014there\u2019s an obliviousness to her in some ways, but she\u2019s also incredibly aware. How did you think about that distance?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

I sometimes made her an unreliable narrator. There\u2019s a scene where she\u2019s getting ready to go to the Tarts and Vicars party and she writes something like, \u201cOh, Daniel was really, really sweet last night and helped me trying on all different outfits and helped me to try on my bunny girl outfit and different ways of wearing it. And it was really sweet of him. I think he really cares about me.\u201d Whereas obviously Mr. Tits Pervert Daniel was just sitting around watching her dress up as a Playboy bunny. When I look back on it now, she was writing in the nineties\u2014it was pre-Me Too. Those people would all have been sacked. Mr. Tits Pervert Daniel, he\u2019d have been canceled. So I did deliberately have her be a bit like Lorelei in Anita Loos\u2019s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/em>. Lorelei is both knowing and not-knowing, if you know what I mean? That\u2019s the joke. So I\u2019d have fun with that.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How did feminism factor into your thinking about Bridget?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Bridget\u2019s friend Shazzer was the ranting feminist. That allowed me to give those opinions to another character and go really hard on them. There\u2019s a moment when Shazzer goes on and on about all the sociological reasons why women would be single. She does that whole speech in the wine bar, talking about how \u201cspinning wheels and sexual scrapheaps conspire to make you feel stupid, no matter how much time you spend thinking about Joanna Lumley and Susan Sarandon\u201d and then Bridget goes \u201cShh\u201d and thinks, \u201cAfter all, there is nothing so unattractive to a man as strident feminism.\u201d That was a joke that I really liked, but I knew it was going to get me into trouble. Camille Paglia really went for it when the book came out. Periodically it rears its head again, like a couple of years ago, when the New York Times<\/em> did a piece about Bridget not being a feminist. I thought, Really? It\u2019s been twenty-five years. I know what the issues are, but I chose to make them funny rather than write some sort of pompous treatise about it. A sense of humor is quite an intelligent way of processing the world, and it\u2019s easy for people to dismiss that if they don\u2019t have one.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a tendency I\u2019ve seen\u2014and you\u2019ve noted this in previous interviews\u2014for people to conflate your life with Bridget\u2019s life and your views with Bridget\u2019s views. Why do you think that happens? Does it bother you?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

When you write a first-person diary, then people are especially going to think it\u2019s you. I was initially kind of horrified, because the very reason for writing the column under a pseudonym was that I thought it was exposing and embarrassing and I didn\u2019t want anyone to know anything about me. I just denied it completely and said, \u201cNo, it\u2019s nothing to do with me. I don\u2019t drink, I don\u2019t smoke, and I\u2019m a virgin,\u201d and everyone roared with laughter and just brushed off the question. At the end of my first American tour, I felt like sitting there with a sign around my neck saying, No, I\u2019m not Bridget Jones. But I don\u2019t really know why that was so interesting to everyone, because obviously it was a bit of me, a bit of the world around me, and a bit exaggerated. Now it bothers me less.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Bridget\u2019s been with you for a long time. Has your idea of her changed?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite a strange thing to have this alter ego, but she\u2019s a nice alter ego to have. She\u2019s imperfect. Having her there lowers the bar a bit generally in life\u2014you don\u2019t expect things to turn out perfectly. It also means that if something goes wrong in my own life, everyone just laughs. In the last film, she\u2019s spinning a lot of plates and she\u2019s always a bit messy around the edges. She will set the spaghetti on fire and be late for school and forget the kids\u2019 snacks. But the thing that matters is that she loves the children just as they are, and that they know that she loves them just as they are. That is the single thing that means that they will be all right. In all the areas where it matters, in the way that she behaves toward other people, the way she is as a friend, as a daughter, as a parent, she\u2019s a very good person. She\u2019s kind, and she\u2019s honest and she\u2019s emotionally intelligent. She\u2019s going to lose focus and get the child stuck up a tree. She\u2019s not really concentrating, but she\u2019s not a fool at all. She\u2019s just human.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The novel you\u2019re working on now is set in the U.S. I think of your novels as being so tied to London and to England. Do you think of them in a similar way?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

I actually wrote a lot of them when I lived in in America. I\u2019d always had those dreams of moving somewhere hot. When Bridget Jones became a success, for the price of a two-bedroom flat in London, back then, you could get a house with a swimming pool in the hills in LA, due to the property prices and the exchange rate. So I just did. I gathered the material in England, but it was easier to write at a distance, even just for concentrating, because London is so social and busy and you can\u2019t walk out the door without somebody saying, Oh, hello, do you want to come for coffee? Whereas LA is a famously isolated city and people are just driving around in their cars or in their houses. It does give you those long stretches of time to write in.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Were there things about Bridget that had to be translated or glossed for an American readership?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, the only thing was the \u201cjacket potato.\u201d They changed all the \u201cjacket potatoes\u201d to \u201cbaked potatoes.\u201d There were probably much bigger things to think about, but for some reason, that particular editor was very focused on potatoes. But Christopher Hitchens wrote an open letter in the Evening Standard<\/em> saying, \u201cDon\u2019t take Bridget to America. They won\u2019t get it. They don\u2019t get self-deprecation and irony.\u201d But he was wrong. They did get it.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The first novel in particular is such an artifact of Britain in the mid-nineties. There\u2019s so much about random Tory politicians.<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Yeah, and there\u2019s a documentary the BBC made, called Being Bridget<\/em> Jones<\/em>, that is very good on the nineties. It was quite a hedonistic time. There was a thing called \u201cladettes.” Something about Bridget fit in with those times\u2014I suppose, sociologically, there were suddenly many reasons why women would be single in their thirties. There was a whole generation of girls in the city, in London, with their own flats and jobs and cars. If you worked in newspapers, everyone was going to the pub after work, girls included. It was also a time when there were a huge number of first-person columns, so much so that Private Eye<\/em>, the satirical magazine, ran a column called Hackwatch, and they used to count the number of times the person used the word I<\/em> or other personal pronouns, to show how self-obsessed they were. I decided that I didn\u2019t want to be in Hackwatch, so I was never going to use personal pronouns at all, which is why I had that style for Bridget, where she hardly ever says I<\/em> or me<\/em>. And I never was in Hackwatch.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do the people close to you feel that they are potential fodder for your novels?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Yes. But my friends are very nice and funny, and they offer things. If it\u2019s a big ask, if I put a huge storyline in, I would ask the person and discuss it with them. And, obviously, make them very, very physically attractive, which is an important thing to do if you use a real person. People come to me a lot with potential Bridget Jones moments, but I\u2019ll still ask, \u201cCan I use it?\u201d They mostly say yeah. Sometimes they say no\u2014usually because they\u2019re a writer and they want to use it themselves. I think there\u2019s an etiquette\u2014you don\u2019t pinch other people\u2019s stuff without asking. Also, I use my friends to read what I\u2019ve written, because I trust them. They know what\u2019s funny and what\u2019s believable. And as soon as you\u2019ve had the success, you can\u2019t really start giving your writing to people in the business, because you\u2019re not going to get an unbiased opinion.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How do you know what\u2019s funny when you\u2019re writing?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Sometimes I write something that just makes me laugh. I love it when that happens. Usually I read back what I\u2019ve written, and often there\u2019s quite a lot of rubbish. I\u2019ll just put the stuff that\u2019s good in bold and keep that, then throw the rest away. Though I try to save what I can. Recently I found another novel I\u2019d written ages ago\u2014I found half of it in a suitcase\u2014and I read it and I thought, Do you know what? I think that\u2019s not bad. I thought it was quite good. So I might go back to that one after the one I\u2019m writing now. I\u2019m never going to have a hit like Bridget again\u2014I mean, that\u2019s just not going to happen\u2014but it doesn\u2019t have to. That was that. Everyone gets to get a turn. And I can just be a writer now.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Did the scrutiny\u2014or does the scrutiny\u2014change the way you write fiction?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

I was more worried ten years ago than I am now, because now there\u2019s so much noise, there are so many books, there are so many films, there are so many Instagram accounts and TikToks and Twitter posts. Sometimes a friend can have some massive scandal and I haven\u2019t even heard about it because of all the news … So, I used to feel very self-conscious as a writer in London, but now I think if I brought out a book, not that many people would know about it at all. There\u2019s so much access to so much information that individual things don\u2019t make such a big splash anymore. When I brought out Mad about the Boy<\/em>, it was on BBC News that Mark Darcy was dead. But now I don\u2019t know how many people even watch BBC News. I feel much more relaxed to just write what I want to write.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you feel a desire to give your characters happy endings?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Happy endings are just about a question of the place where you choose to stop the story. In a life, there\u2019s lots of moments when you could say, Stop right there. Virginia Woolf\u2019s Mrs. Ramsay says, \u201cLife stand still here\u201d\u2014this moment is a happy ending right now. But it won\u2019t stay like that. If Jane Austen had written the marriage of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, who knows what that would\u2019ve been like? I mean, he\u2019s pretty grumpy and moody.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

How do you know when to stop your books?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

Usually because they\u2019re saying, \u201cHelen, the deadline was four weeks ago, and it\u2019s supposed to be being printed.\u201d But really, I think you can faff around too much. It\u2019s like when someone does up a house\u2014there comes a moment when you\u2019ve got to stop thinking, What about this? What about that?<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The last thing I wanted to ask you\u2014in your first column ever, Bridget spends a bit of time brooding on the Cones Hotline. \u201cOn top of everything, I open the papers to find the bloody Cones Hotline is being scrapped. Who else am I supposed to ring up late at night when I feel lonely? … In my experience there is always some bored chap at the end of it at any hour of the day or night, only too happy to moan a little about people ringing up at 2am to order a 99 or Cornetto (\u201cI know, I know\u201d) then move on to your own problems.\u201d What is the Cones Hotline? What was the Cones Hotline?<\/p>\n

FIELDING<\/p>\n

It was a mad thing. I was working on the news desk or the political desk, so I was very conscious of news stories. There was a random little news story about how there was a lot of roadwork on the M1 or something, and there were traffic cones and everyone was getting cross about the traffic cones. They set up this Cones Hotline, so that you could call up and complain if the traffic cones had fallen over. It was a classic mad idea, one that obviously was not going to work. There were not going to be enough people to man the Cones Hotline and to pick up the cones. It was one of those ideas that just makes you think, what? I thought that was a great story to put in the column\u2014oh, she\u2019s so lonely she\u2019s going to call it the Cones Hotline. Oh no, the Cones Hotline has been closed down, so I can\u2019t even call them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rosa Lyster is a writer who lives in London.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHappy endings are just about a question of the place where you choose to stop the story. In a life, there\u2019s lots of moments when you could say, Stop right there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1957,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-172294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCatching Up with Helen Fielding by Rosa Lyster<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"December 1, 2025 \u2013 \u201cHappy endings are just about a question of the place where you choose to stop the story. 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