London - Her much-loved creation Bridget Jones is famously unlucky in love – but author Helen Fielding has discovered the formula for dating success: being a bitch.
The bestselling writer has revealed that she set up fake profiles on internet dating sites – and found that a nastier persona attracted more male interest.
As research for her latest book, Fielding set up two accounts: one featuring a photograph of a woman in a sensible sweater who loved to read and cook; the other called “SuperLuckyBitch” who had a sexy photograph and a description which “portrayed her as a real bitch”.
Fielding revealed: “So I had SuperLuckyBitch, who was glamorous but really horrible, and it said on her profile, ‘You’d be lucky to get a date with me’, and the other woman was really nice and sweet.
“Well, I bet you can guess who was the most popular. SuperLuckyBitch got all the replies.”
The 55-year-old author was speaking about Mad About The Boy, the third book in the Bridget Jones series, at an event in Los Angeles hosted by her friend, the Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher.
When Fisher asked Fielding – who split from former partner Kevin Curran in 2009 – if she had gone on dates with any of the men her fake profiles attracted, she laughed: “I did see one person, but he realised that I was a writer and guessed who I was. I went and met him and explained I was doing research and he was very nice about it.”
The writer admitted to sharing Bridget’s obsessive streak, which saw her counting every calorie she consumed and documenting her weight daily. She also became so addicted to Twitter that the social network cut her off after she checked her own profile 150 times in one hour. She explained: “I had to stop with the Twitter. It is a bit of a giant popularity contest. I think I got (blocked) as I checked how many followers I had too many times.”
Fielding revealed many similarities between herself and Bridget during the 90-minute talk, including a disorganised approach to work. She said she spends hours “faffing about” before starting work – and often makes Bridget-style gaffes.
“I was due to have my daughter by C-section at Cedars Sinai, so I wrote out this mass e-mail to everyone announcing the birth as it was all planned, but I sent out the e-mail by mistake beforehand. Then I had to let everyone know that I hadn’t even had the baby yet,” she said.
“I don’t have a routine for writing. Instead I spend hours going to the fridge or cleaning out the cupboards. I spend a lot of time faffing about, then it’s time to pick the kids up from school.
“I do a lot of late-night writing – and then I just steal the plot from Jane Austen,” she joked.
She said that initially, she didn’t intend her latest book – which covers topics such as dating among 50-somethings – to be about Bridget Jones, but “along the way I realised it needed to be Bridget”.
She said: “It took me about three months to become Bridget again. It was easier to write it because I was in London. There’s no way I could’ve written it if I was still living in LA. I never told anyone that I was doing a new Bridget book. I wanted to get it written without anyone else’s input.”
She hasn’t ruled out another Bridget Jones book, but said: “I don’t know if I’ll bring Bridget back again at 61 or 65. I wouldn’t want to do it just for the sake of doing it. I’d only do it if I had something to say.” – Mail On Sunday