I like L.A. It's like a mini break. For a writer, it's hilarious. Like the food. Where I come from, we eat chip sandwiches: white bread, butter, tomato catsup and big fat french fries. It's delicious. Here, you order a creme caramel and the waiter says, 'You know, that contains dairy.

Reminded of favorite poem by Wendy Cope which goes: At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle. The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle. And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle, And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful if you're single.

More than two years after Mad About the Boy was published, the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries ] movie started coming together. I felt better about the material, and found myself writing a letter from Bridget to her son: explaining the original story of how he came to be, from his own Mum.

When someone loves you it's like having a blanket all round your heart.

I'd been working on the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries material] for years, first, in the Independent newspaper columns and then in the various versions of the movie scripts.

Don't say 'what,' say 'pardon,' darling, and do as your mother tells you.

It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.