I tend to take [ to Bridget Jones Diaries] something that nearly happened, or might have happened, and then exaggerate it to make it funny and to make it tie into the themes.

That's when the idea for Mad About the Boy arrived. It wasn't even a Bridget [Jones] story initially - then I realized I was writing in Bridget's voice and it grew from there into a Bridget novel.

As Bridget writes to her son, in Bridget Jones' Baby - "if you just keep calm and keep your spirits up, things have a habit of turning out all right, just as they did for me."

I always market research my books before I hand them in by showing them to five or six close friends who I trust to be honest with me, so they are very heavily re-written already.

I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own devices. I can't take the pressure.

If the stories don't come from the inside out, then Bridget [Jones] is not being true to herself and it's very important to me that she stays that way.

On social media people tend to show off, and post their most attractive picture, and moments that are most likely to give everyone else FOMO (Fear of Missing out). They rarely share the moments when they feel down, or when things have gone wrong and they need support.