Diary writer found date online for Bridget’s new outing

Helen Fielding, who grew up in Morley, Leeds, said she had created fake profiles for two “nice and sweet” and “glamorous but really horrible” alter-egos.

“Well, I bet you can guess who was the most popular,” the 55-year-old said, revealing it was the latter.

Speaking at an event in LA, she also admitted meeting up with one man she met online through her experiment.

“I went and met him and explained I was doing research and he was very nice about it,” she said.

Fielding also discussed similarities between herself and Bridget, including their obsessive streaks and disorganised approach to work.

The author said she would not write another Bridget Jones book “just for the sake of doing it”, but only if she had “something to say”.

Fans were shocked and upset to learn hero Mark Darcy is dead and Bridget has become a widow in the latest book.

More than a decade after the last novel in the saga, it turns out unlucky-in-love Bridget married Darcy and gave him two children – only for Fielding to kill off the awkward yet successful barrister.

Bridget Jones’s Diary started life as as a newspaper column in 1995.

Two best-selling novels followed, with Hollywood blockbuster film adaptations featuring Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.

Portrayed as a stereotypical 1990s London thirty-something worried about her weight, smoking and alcohol intake, Bridget struck a chord with women of her generation.

The latest book, Mad About The Boy, chronicles her adventures as a 51-year-old wrinkle-obsessed cougar who meets new 30-year-old toy boy Roxter on Twitter five years after Darcy’s death.