Pride and Prejudice influenced Bridget Jones

Fielding has never made any secret of it: the column that became the novel borrowed Austen's plot wholesale because she needed a structure and thought nobody would notice.

• Mark Darcy carries the name, the rudeness at a first meeting, the unexplained good deed later, and the second-chance proposal
• Daniel Cleaver is Wickham: charming, plausible, and already known to Darcy
• Bridget's mother is Mrs Bennet with a shopping channel

The joke closed on itself when Colin Firth, who had played Darcy in the 1995 serial, was cast as Mark Darcy in the films, and Fielding wrote a scene in the sequel where Bridget interviews him about it.