Helen Fielding

Good news story.

Helen Fielding, who is the author of Bridget Jones's Diary, has just launched the Bridget Jones Prize for Northern Comedy Writing Award.

Oh, that's amazing.

Yeah.

Hello and welcome to the programme, bringing you highlights from the Woman's Hour week.

Coming up, Bridget Jones's diary author Helen Fielding on her new writing prize.

She's looking for funny northern voices.

Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Dr Marianne Stevenson, on new menopause regulations for employers and rules over single-sex spaces.

So service providers need to think about how they kind of balance these things sensitively and thoughtfully and with common sense, which we have done for decades.

That was Nuala talking to Dr Marianne Stevenson, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Still to come on the programme, can the shingles vaccine protect women against dementia? Then we'll hear from Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding.

And remember, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day.

This time of the week, after the actual news, we like to talk about news that wasn't in the news, that could, would or should have been in the news, if the news were designed to make you feel better, which it's not.

Honourable mention to, I was going to talk about the very brave Helen Fielding, of course, author of Bridget Jones, who has launched a new prize to encourage writers of funny diaries from the north of England to get in touch.

And I would just say, having released my diary, she needs to be careful because she might not get the gag rate she's looking for.

Do you know what I mean? Are you

We need another woman.

So I'm going to go with Helen Fielding.

Okay, that's interesting.

I think

George Eliot and Helen Fielding would get

on surprisingly well, actually.

I think you're the first person who's actually thought of, how is this going to get on from a balance point of view, rather than just three amazing people.

That conversation coming up in just a moment.

But also today, the author Helen Fielding will be here.

Can you believe the novel Bridget Jones was written some 30 years ago? Doesn't time fly? Well, Helen is launching and funding the Bridget Jones Writing Prize, and she's looking for northern stars, so to speak.

We'll talk to her about that.

Right.

Let me move on to the very quiet guest who crept into the studio while I was speaking to Alex.

That is the author Helen Fielding, best known for creating the beloved character of Bridget Jones, who is now featured in four films.

Yes, I did sit down to watch one of them again last night.

Join me tomorrow.

The author Helen Fielding will be with us, yes, reflecting on 30 years of Bridget Jones.

How time flies, just like this past hour.

I'll see you again tomorrow at 10:00.

Those secondary characters, they do give, like, relief to...

It's funny, isn't it? How in romantic comedies, the more modern romantic comedies and Richard Curtis and Helen Fielding and all the rest of it, it's exactly the same.

Yeah.

They use the same trope.

The article explicitly highlights a 1974 hardcover book club edition of Carrie with the dust jacket valuing it at $100.

We also have Madeleine L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet with a signed first printing noted at $300, and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, specifically a signed first American edition bundled with the first edition of its sequel, The Edge of Reason, fetching $500.

Three profoundly different types of books, yet they all hold significant secondary market value for entirely different, deeply psychological reasons.

Okay, I have to stop you right away and zero in on the Stephen King example because this completely contradicts a golden rule of book collecting.

It requires the reader to constantly read between the lines to understand what is not being said in the dialogue.

And then on the other hand, the other major influence is Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.

Which is basically the absolute antithesis of Wharton in terms of style.

Completely.