Mad About The Boy: Bridget Jones is back – but is she still relevant?

Published

8 months ago

February 13, 2025

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A “verbally incontinent spinster, who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and dresses like her mother” – not an auspicious introduction to Bridget Rose Jones, but accurate.

On paper, it doesn’t sound like the dream role, but Renée Zellweger disagrees, telling Sky News: “It’s the best job in the world to step into her shoes for a while”.

Three decades after the character came to life on the page, and following a trio of earlier films, Zellweger has returned to “this just endearing character” for a fourth movie, Mad About The Boy.

With returning characters including Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Emma Thompson, new relationships are also introduced, with Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor joining the cast.

Zellweger goes on: “I love her. I love her humour. I love her vulnerability. I love her imperfection. I love the opportunity to play out her miscalculating a plan and it maybe, surprising her in her execution. I love all of it.”

The first film earned Zellweger an Oscar nod for her portrayal of Bridget, and the character’s name has gone into the lexicon.

Mad About The Boy director Michael Morris – the first male director to step into the franchise – told Sky News: “When you see Bridget, you realize how many, how few characters there are in film that are just unapologetically human. It’s weird. There should be more…

“She looks the way she looks when she gets up. She’s late for school. She drops things when she shouldn’t drop them. She makes the wrong speech when she needs to give the right speech. And all of those things make you just fall in love with her.”

After years of soul-searching, her creator, Helen Fielding, has decided the key to Bridget’s appeal lies in her revealing “the gap between how you feel you are supposed to be and how you really are inside.”

Fielding’s anonymous columns for The Independent, first published in 1995, were a word-of-mouth hit. The four subsequent books were bestsellers.

Produced by Working Title – the production company behind British hits including Four Weddings And A Funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill – the first film took more than $280m (£225m) worldwide.

Studio bosses will be hoping Mad About The Boy will work a similar magic, and with ticket pre-sales proving bigger than Barbie, it’s looking promising.

Digging down into Bridget’s enduring appeal, Angela McRobbie, Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London, told Sky News the character’s timely merging of political and popular culture sent out a positive message to young women in the 90s and early 2000s.

“The figure of Bridget Jones, both in writing and then in film represented a new kind of young woman who had been to university, who knew her Jane Austen, and who knew a little bit about feminism.

“There was a sense in which the knowledge of feminism haunted the Bridget Jones phenomena, but in a way that she wanted to discard it and put it in the past.

“She wanted to be feminine. She wanted to be sexy. She wanted to [wear a] Playboy bunny outfit. And in her dream landscape, she imagined a white wedding with lots of kids in the Home Counties. There was a sense in which what the column and then the film did was offered a kind of release from the burden of being feminist”.

She says Bridget wearing a see-through shirt and miniskirt into the office was her way of saying: “We have to live with sexual inequality, it’s not such a bad thing. I want to be a real girl. I want to enjoy my sexuality if it gets me the attention I want from the boss”.

McRobbie goes on: “In some ways, you could say she was legitimising a kind of sexual inequality in the workplace, but in a fun, light-hearted way.”

Emotional intelligence coach and Bridget Jones fan Miriam Bross told Sky News she can see why Bridget has been described as “feminist Marmite”.

“I think one of the reasons why people react strongly to her is because she was turned into an icon. She was supposed to be the woman of the 90s…

“That’s when you get this polarisation where you feel like you have to either be in favour of Bridget or not. But actually, she’s such a complex character that there’s something for everybody.

“She was this single woman who had fun. Yes, she ends up with a man in the end. But that isn’t the main part. The main part is that she is successful. Even though she makes mistakes, she is a normal weight and is still chased by men.

“Why Bridget still lives on is because she gave people the main message – be yourself and you’re going to be okay.”

Bross also says that Bridget helped prove that a film focused on the female experience could be as successful as a male-led movie.

“In the 80s, rom coms were all about neurotic men finding love… The female leads in them had very little to say.”

A case in point is Julia Roberts’s actress heroine in Notting Hill – as Bross says – “her silence is so normalised that Ronan Keating wrote the song When You Say Nothing At All celebrating her silence”.

But then in comes Bridget: “She talks. She has voiceovers. We see her thoughts. It’s about her. It’s not just about her and love, it’s about her in her job, we see her working. We see her making mistakes. We see her.”

Bross goes on: “Who doesn’t like to see themselves represented on film? Representation matters very much. And here was this flawed woman who got the guy in the end.”

Both McRobbie and Bross say they will be watching Mad About The Boy.

But is it the same old Bridget we’ll see in the new film? With a very different tone to previous instalments, can fans look forward to the dollop of nostalgia they’re likely craving?

As McRobbie rightly notes, the experience of the Gen Z audience watching the movie today is very different to that of their predecessors.

“It’s a much tougher world than it was certainly in the early 2000s and even in the second film. Young women have to deal with toxic masculinity, and they have to navigate their way through sexuality and they’re much more aware of sexual violence.”

It begs the question, will Bridget have the same appeal in 2025 as she did in 2001?

Bross says she still has much to offer: “This character is like an old friend. So even if she’s not entirely up to date, you will still love her…

“When people are stressed, when they’re anxious, they turn to the familiar. People do need something soothing. They need narratives that help them calm down in stressful times.”

Meanwhile, Zellweger promises Bridget will still exhibit all the qualities that have made her beloved worldwide.

“I think it’s just a continuation of these authentic representations of a person’s experience and different life chapters.

“It feels like the essence of the person is the same and her very familiar optimism, her vulnerability and her sweetness and her humour, all that’s the same.”

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is in cinemas now.

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Manchester Pride put into voluntary liquidation – as money owed to artists

Published

1 day ago

October 22, 2025

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Manchester Pride put into voluntary liquidation and being assessed by regulator

Manchester Pride has been put into voluntary liquidation – and the future of the event is now in doubt.

Artists and suppliers are owed money following this year’s event, according to an Instagram statement issued by Pride’s board of trustees.

Pride’s organisers cited rising costs, declining ticket sales and an unsuccessful bid to host Euro Pride as factors behind the decision.

The organisation is a charity and limited company that campaigns for LGBTQ+ equality and offers training, research, policy analysis, advocacy and outreach activities, as well as putting on the annual parade and live event.

The statement said: “It is with enormous sadness that we announce that Manchester Pride has started the legal process of voluntary liquidation.

“A combination of rising costs, which are affecting the entire events and hospitality industries, declining ticket sales and an ambitious refresh of the format aimed to challenge these issues, along with an unsuccessful bid to host Euro Pride, has led to the organisation no longer being financially viable.

“We regret the delays in communicating the current situation; however, we were keen not to jeopardise financial opportunities while our discussions were ongoing.

“We were proactive and determined to identify solutions to the financial issues. We’ve been actively working with several partners, including legal and financial advisors, to do everything we could to find a positive solution.

“We had hoped to be able to find a way to continue, and, most importantly, to support our artists, contractors and partners.

“Despite our best efforts, sadly, this has not proved to be possible. We are sincerely sorry for those who will now lose out financially from the current situation.

“The volunteer board of trustees are devastated at this situation and sad to share that our staff team will be made redundant.

“We, along with the team, have put our hearts and souls into the celebration and community activities over two decades and are very distressed at the position in which we find ourselves.”

“The Manchester Pride team have now handed over the details of suppliers and artists who are owed money to the liquidators who will be handling the affairs of the charity and contacting everyone.”

Manchester Pride’s financial difficulties were first reported by The Mill last week.

Last year, industry experts warned that without urgent intervention the UK looks set to see “the end of a clubbing era that has defined generations”.

Research found that in the last four years the UK had lost 37% of its clubs, which works out at about 10 clubs closing each month.

Sky News has previously reported how small, independent music venues have been closing at the rate of one per week and pubs have been shutting at a rate of one per day.

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White House responds to report Trump is considering commuting Diddy’s prison sentence

Published

1 day ago

October 22, 2025

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White House responds to report Trump is considering commuting Diddy's prison sentence

A White House official has said there is “zero truth” to a report that Donald Trump is considering commuting Sean “Diddy” Combs’s prison sentence as early as this week.

On Monday, US entertainment site TMZ reported the US president was “vacillating” on whether or not to reduce the music mogul’s sentence, citing a “high-ranking White House official”.

Combs was sentenced to 50 months in prison and given a $500,000 fine at a hearing on 3 October, after being found guilty of prostitution charges relating to his former girlfriends and male sex workers at the end of his high-profile trial in the summer.

Earlier this week, the 55-year-old’s legal team filed a legal document officially signalling their intention to appeal.

Now, a White House official has pushed back on TMZ’s report about a possible commutation.

There is “zero truth to the TMZ report, which we would’ve gladly explained had they reached out before running their fake news”, the official told NBC, Sky News’ US partner.

Mr Trump, “not anonymous sources, is the final decider on pardons and commutations”, the official added.

Casey Carver, a spokesperson for TMZ, said in a brief statement: “We stand by our story.”

In an update to the story on the outlet’s website, the news site said: “The White House Communications Office is saying our story is not true. We stand by our story. Our story is accurate.”

Lawyers for Combs did not immediately return a request for comment about the disparity between the White House statement and TMZ’s reporting. However, they previously told NBC News they had been pursuing a pardon.

Pardons and commuting – what is the difference?

In the US federal system, commutation of sentence and pardons are different forms of executive clemency, “which is a broad term that applies to the president’s constitutional power to give leniency to persons who have committed federal crimes”, according to the justice department.

Neither signifies innocence, but a pardon is an expression of a president’s forgiveness and can be granted in recognition of acceptance of responsibility and good conduct, reinstating rights such as the right to vote.

A commutation reduces a sentence either totally or partially but does not remove civil disabilities that apply as a result of criminal conviction.

What has Donald Trump said?

In August, before Combs’s sentencing, Mr Trump said in an interview that he had been approached about a possible pardon but implied he would not be granting one.

“You know, I was very friendly with him. I got along with him great and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t know him well,” the president said. “But when I ran for office, he was very hostile.”

When asked if he was suggesting he would not pardon Combs, he replied: “I would say so.”

“When you knew someone and you were fine, and then you run for office, and he made some terrible statements. So, I don’t know, it’s more difficult,” Mr Trump said. “Makes it more – I’m being honest, it makes it more difficult to do.”

The president has issued several pardons and commutations in his second term – including to around 1,500 criminal defendants in connection with the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

Last week, he commuted the sentence of disgraced former Republican congressman George Santos.

Combs was found guilty of two counts of transportation for prostitution in July, but was cleared of more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking, which carried potential life sentences.

Ahead of his sentencing, he told the court he admitted his past behaviour was “disgusting, shameful and sick”, and apologised personally to Cassie Ventura and “Jane”, another former girlfriend who testified anonymously during the trial.

He told the court he got “lost in my excess and lost in my ego”, but since his time in prison he has been “humbled and broken to my core”, adding: “I hate myself right now… I am truly sorry for it all.”

The rapper is serving his sentence at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where his team has said conditions are “inhumane”.

He has asked to be moved to a low-security federal prison in New Jersey, but the Bureau of Prisons has yet to approve the request.

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Police should focus on ‘tackling real crime’, No 10 says, after Met Police halts non-crime hate probes

Published

2 days ago

October 21, 2025

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Police should focus on 'tackling real crime', No 10 says, after Met Police halts non-crime hate probes

Officers should focus on “tackling real crime and policing the streets”, Downing Street has said – after the Metropolitan Police announced it is no longer investigating non-crime hate incidents.

The announcement by Britain’s biggest force on Monday came after it emerged Father Ted creator Graham Linehan will face no further action after he was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence over three posts he made on X about transgender issues.

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Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said police forces will “get the clarity they need to keep our streets safe” when a review of non-crime hate incidents by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing is published in December.

“The police should focus on tackling real crime and policing the streets,” he said.

“The home secretary has asked that this review be completed at pace, working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing.

“We look forward to receiving its findings as soon as possible, so that the other forces get the clarity they need to keep our streets safe.”

He said the government will “always work with police chiefs to make sure criminal law and guidance reflects the common-sense approach we all want to see in policing”.

After Linehan’s September arrest, Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said officers were in “an impossible position” when dealing with statements made online.

On Monday, a Met spokesperson said the commissioner had been “clear he doesn’t believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates, with current laws and rules on inciting violence online leaving them in an impossible position”.

The force said the decision to no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents would now “provide clearer direction for officers, reduce ambiguity and enable them to focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations”.

Justice minister Sarah Sackman said it is “welcome news” the Met will now be focusing on crimes such as phone snatching, mugging, antisocial behaviour and violent crime.

Asked if other forces should follow the Met’s decision, she said: “I think that other forces need to make the decisions that are right for their communities.

“But I’m sure that communities up and down the country would want that renewed focus on violent crime, on antisocial behaviour, and on actual hate crime.”

The Met said it will still record non-crime hate incidents to use as “valuable pieces of intelligence to establish potential patterns of behaviour or criminality”.