LIZ JONES’S DIARY: In which I chase a happier ending

‘It all began on New Year’s Day in my 65th year of being single. Once again, I found myself on my own…’

That is the only slightly bastardised first line from Bridget Jones’s Diary, a film which, when seen through fresh eyes today, is all too likely to offend, given it contains relatives who grope, calls the Japanese ‘a very cruel race’, and the only person of colour is Salman Rushdie.

Auschwitz is mentioned, as well as that now banned word when referring to women: ‘fat’. But it remains, despite all this ‒ and the fact the Daily Mail forced me to wear the ACTUAL PROSTHETIC BREASTS used in the film to go out with my girlfriends for the evening (they didn’t for a minute think me pregnant; they just assumed I’d had my reduction reversed) ‒ my favourite film of all time.

Close runner-up is The Holiday. This despite the fact Kate Winslet’s character, working very long hours on a newspaper, gets home to her dog late at night, having left him home alone for hours!

And she still gets a boyfriend! In real life she snubbed me on the Baftas red carpet, saying to her publicist, ‘I’m not going to talk to her!’ Instead, Cuba Gooding Jr was wheeled over to the fashion enclosure (they confine us in a steel pen at the end of a long roof, which means we get dripped on). I wasn’t expecting a man, so my only prepared question, ‘How long did it take you to get dressed?’, fell on puzzled ears.

Third is Sleepless in Seattle, featuring Meg Ryan as a deranged journalist (Hollywood is but a mirror) who stalks Tom Hanks, hires a private detective (again, uncanny!) and still gets her man rather than a custodial sentence.

I’m writing this column in mid-December. An email has just popped into my inbox, a group message from Tom, my nephew who lives in Australia. Whenever I see his name, I expect the worst: his mum, my sister Lyn, has been very ill for years. But today, it’s good news: ‘Hope you’re all doing splendidly. Just a quick update. Mum’s doing well, no huge dramatic medical issues to report right now. However, I decided that if she was going to be super stubborn and refuse to open the door whenever Death knocked, I might try to make her time in the facility a little more tolerable. So I got her a tablet/laptop.

‘Now, I know what you’re all thinking: ‘Tom, you must have lost your mind. Carolyn couldn’t possibly learn how to work one of those.’ And you’d be right [Lynnie has never owned a mobile phone]. Just trying to explain the concept of a password to unlock the damn thing took the better part of an hour. But I stuck with it and I think it (mostly) stuck.

‘Basically, I loaded it with a few apps to help with her memory/cognition, music, etc, but also Skype. And that’s where you all come in. If you have Skype, great. If you don’t, get it. These plans will of course change in about three days when she drops it and it smashes, probably. Anyway! Get back to me when you can. Peace!’

I love his sunny optimism. I’ve been so busy worrying about myself, men, work, having to move house and on and on and on that I have barely given my sister a thought. The only time I seriously decided to go to Australia was to stalk Nigel, the Liam Neeson lookalike photographer. I bought new Hanro knickers and a suitcase. Then the pandemic happened. I wouldn’t have been allowed into the country, let alone a care home. I google the current rules for travelling to Sydney. Surely they allow people like me into the country, given the vaccine didn’t stop transmission. Yes! They do!

So rather than buy gifts for ungrateful bastards, or even buy a tree, I book my ticket. For once in my life, I’m travelling economy. I’m sending Lynnie a Christmas card with my dates, and a Paul McCartney limited-edition postage stamp to jog her memory. Lynnie was a 60s dolly bird who morphed into a 70s hippie, but to me will always be Bridget: blonde, ditsy, often to be found in Debenhams. B found her happy ending, while Lynnie, like most of us, did not. Her eldest son’s death from leukaemia broke her marriage and her heart. I’m hoping to patch it up, just a little…

READ MORE:

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WHY does Meghan always wear utterly impractical white when she’s got two toddlers, a bunch of dogs and chickens and presumably she’s against dry cleaning because it’s bad for dolphins or something, asks LIZ JONES