Helen Fielding Biography

Having always wanted to be a writer, she moved to The Sunday Times (London), where she began contributing a personal column but resigned because of editorial interference with her copy. After attempting to sell a novel to Mills and Boon, publishers of romance fiction, and collaborating on a comical book about sex, Who's Had Who: In Association with Berk's Rogerage: An Historical Register Containing Official Lay Lines of History From the Beginning of Time to the Present Day (1987), Fielding wrote Cause Celeb, based not only on her experiences in Africa with Comic Relief, but also more generally on her knowledge of the London media world. The novel contrasts the two settings. Rosie Richardson is a relief worker in an African country that resembles Sudan, in charge of a refugee camp for families who have fled the civil war in neighboring Kefti. She came to Africa four years earlier on a "mission of mercy" invented as a publicity ploy by her employer, partly to escape and partly to impress her demanding, selfish, inconsiderate, and inattentive celebrity lover, Oliver March, the presenter of a televised arts program. (In a pattern that is repeated in the Bridget Jones novels, Rosie tolerated his mistreatment of her and seemed inclined to blame herself ).