Widowed Bridget Jones returns with 30-year-old toyboy in fourth movie

In the third film, titled Bridget Jones’s Baby, Firth’s character competed with the billionaire US love guru Jack Qwant, played by Patrick Dempsey, for the attention of Bridget after she fell pregnant.

The hit 2016 sequel came 12 years after Zellweger resumed her near-flawless English accent in the second instalment, Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason.

The original adaptation, Bridget Jones’s Diary, starring Zellweger as a 30-something chardonnay-swilling singleton, was released in 2001 to wide acclaim.

When Mad About The Boy was published in 2013, Fielding told BBC News that she had written it in secret to be free of expectations and “so that I could write it like the first one”.

She told Woman’s Hour that Bridget’s treasured diaries remained an integral feature of the plot, intertwined with the modern struggles of social media.

“But she has grown up. My life has moved on and hers will move on too,” said Fielding. “She’s still trying to give up [drinking and smoking], she’s still on a diet. She’s trying a bit harder, and is a bit more successful, but she’s never really going to change.”