Off Air... with Jane and Fi - OFF AIR... EXTRA

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Happy Friday! We're bringing you a bonus episode this Friday featuring an interview from our Times Radio afternoon show (2-4pm, Monday to Thursday). Jane and Fi speak to journalist Lizzie Frainier (The millennial Bridget Jones) about the legacy of Bridget Jones. We hope you enjoy! The next book club pick has been announced! Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is by Hilary Mantel. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] us on Instagram! @janeandfiPodcast Producer: Eve SalusburyExecutive Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For just £1 a month for 6 months, you can enjoy unlimited digital access to the Times and Sunday Times when you subscribe with Google. Stay well informed on news, politics, business, culture and sport wherever you are, with the latest stories and live updates on the Times app and website. Don't miss out! Visit thetimes.com forward slash subscribe with Google to claim your offer today. 18 Plus, New Customers Only. Offer ends midnight April the 14th. T's and C's apply. Greetings, lovely people. This is the Offer with Jane and Fee Friday feed where we put in a little bit extra, something from the show which is on air every day

on Times Radio between 2 and 4. And this week we really wanted to give you something a bit sunshiny because it is gloomy out there isn't it? Not just in terms of the weather but in terms of what's happening in the world and we just wanted to perk you up a bit. So you might be going to see Bridget Jones 4, Mad About the Boy, this weekend, even if you're not. You can't be listening to this podcast if you don't know who Bridget Jones is. And this is something of a celebration of her life. So here we go.

If you're a single woman, you've probably been here. Hmm, major dilemma. If I actually do buy some terrible chance to end up in for grande, surely these would be most attractive at crucial moment. However, chances of reaching crucial moment greatly increase by wearing these. Scary stomach holding in pants very popular with grannies is the world over. Tricky. Very tricky. So Big Pants, alcohol units consumed, Daniel Cleaver, Jude Shazza, weight gain, office humiliation. It is Bridget Jones. Bridget Jones 4, Mad About the Boy is out this week in a cinema near you. It's the one where we find Bridget widowed, still fighting her internal voice of doom and falling for a much younger man. Renée Zellweger and Leo Woodle are a match made in cinematic heaven

for some and a sicky burp of confected romance for others. Lizzie Freynier cannot escape the Bridget Jones fever because something of a Renée Zellweger look-alike, she's been fielding the comparison for years, and I've just inserted a Helen Fielding-sized reference there, Helen being the writer behind the whole glorious shebang. Lizzie, it's lovely to meet you. You really do look like Renée Zellweger, don't you? Which is not a bad thing.

No, it's not. I used to in my early 20s and my teens, I worked in this coffee shop and almost every day, someone would say, you look like Bridget Jones Jones and I used to hate it because I thought you know she wasn't exactly a pinup girl and you know she worried about her weight and she was unlucky in love and it wasn't until I got to my late 20s and my early 30s that I decided that actually it was the biggest compliment because I had so much rather be the silly and authentic version of the you know classic girl next door than someone that I'm not. So you're a writer too and your associate travel editor of The Times and

The Sunday Times you've come a long way to see us today I think you've traveled five floors we're very grateful to you for doing that but you've got a book out at the moment as well main character lessons from from a real life rom-com. Is that you really leaning into Bridget Jones and kind of charting your life against hers? It's not specifically about Bridget Jones, it's about all those classic 90s and 90s rom-coms. So each chapter in the book looks at a different relationship, situationship, one night stand. And it's through the lens of my favorite rom-coms from Bridget Jones to Notting Hill. And it's the lessons that I learned from them. So, you know, there's lots of negative lessons from rom-coms, like you should date the bad boy,

which I have done again and again, and I will not be doing any longer. But there's positive lessons, I think, from rom-coms too. We talk so much about the toxicity of rom-coms, but actually, I think leaning into being the main character. If you picture yourself as the main character, not in any film, can't be a thriller or a drama, but a rom-com, the ups and downs of dating, rather than feeling like a battlefield,

feel a lot more exciting and fun, because you never know what's going to be around the corner. I really remember Bridget Jones when the original diary first came out and the thing that I loved about it was that internal voice of self-doubt of trying to present an image of yourself to the world where inside you were constantly worried about the size of your thighs and it was just for me as a young woman at the time it actually felt reassuring. I would imagine you're quite a bit younger than me so did you find it to be that too? A lot of people have said it

hasn't really dated very well. Yeah I keep hearing that and I disagree with it. I read it for the first time when I was about 11 or 12. Oh my goodness. I know. I found it. Too young. Way too young, but I found it on my mother's bookshelf and I just thought it was the most glamorous, sexy thing. And my mum told me I was not allowed to read that book, which obviously meant that I wanted nothing other than to read that book. So I'd sort of sneak and read it under my duvet. And yeah, I've heard a lot in recent years about the negativity,

about how she views her weight. But just like you were saying, I don't think Helen Fielding was trying to say that Bridget Jones was fat. I think she was trying to reflect what women from your generation to my generation have felt for so long. If I go around my circle of friends, almost all of them would say that at some point in their life they wish that they had lost five pounds and that's not to say that they should, but that's how people feel inside and Bridget Jones reflects that. Yeah, no, totally and I think actually it was a bold voice at the time because the 90s was full of this imagery of women that was really about perfection for the male gaze. It was not

about feeling that certain of yourself as a self-doubting human being. It was about wearing a wonder bra and pretending that equality would therefore come your way. It was a very confusing time actually. Maybe you escaped that. How old are you now? I'm gonna be 32 next week. 32, Jane, do you remember 32? Oh, God, unfortunately I do. Funny enough, I think it's the age that Bridget Jones is in the first book. And I think that's the other thing that I loved about Bridget Jones is as a woman approaching your 30s, you can so often feel like you're not in the right place, that you haven't met the right person, and there's a lot of pressure on your age. Whereas actually, if you look at Bridget Jones, and at the start of the

film, she's 32. And similar with shows like Sex and the City, where these powerful, you know, women, even though she's a bit of a mishap, but you still love her, is in her 30s. That's such a reassuring message to think, you know what, I don't have it all figured out yet, but neither does Bridget Jones. So it kind of takes the pressure off of it. She also created this fantastic expression the smug married which really summed up how it felt you know when every other phone call on a landline was somebody saying you know we're getting married and if you weren't getting married you know you did feel left out.

And I wonder whether that has changed in your generation too. I don't think that's changed really, but it's just the way that you interact with the Smug Marries has changed. Because now, rather than calling you up on a landline, they post about it on Instagram. So, you know, me and my single friends always joke about, it's like the same three captions that you see again and again. Go on, tell us.

So, the one that you always see is like, so happy to have found my person. The other one, the other one, this is a great one, where someone posts like a bouquet of flowers or a really expensive present. And then they just, the caption just says, boy done good. And me and my single friends, we just like see, we see that. Not, you know, I'm happy for those people, but it's just- Oh, boy done good. And me and my single friends, we just like see that. Not, you know, I'm happy for those people, but it's just... Oh, I'm not. It's such a strange way, you know, like...

Keep it to yourself, God. Yeah. Yeah. And the third one? The third one is when someone says, they complete me, which I really hate that message. And that's one of the things about Bridget Jones that I don't like is there's so much emphasis on her finding romantic love and she feels like she can't be happy until she finds that whereas I think you know that's one of the messages of my book and that I've found as I

went through my 20s and now in my 30s that you know meeting someone is great and exciting and they can be an extra and a bonus but but you're not half of a person, you don't need someone else to complete you and to feel happy and successful. Unfortunately, Hollywood does require that, doesn't it? It does. I'm absolutely with you on that and I'm glad that you said it,

but this, we are promised, is the last ever Bridget Jones film, it is film number four. It does have a semi-tragic plot though, doesn't it, because we find Bridget widowed but I would imagine that the impulse of the film is entirely about finding somebody else and finding love again are you a bit disappointed in that? I'm a little bit disappointed I haven't seen the film yet so obviously I don't know I'm kind of hoping that that at the end of the film, despite having these wonderful adventures with these two different men,

you know, they always want her choosing between two, that she might decide that actually she's quite happy on her own. But I think that's probably not going to happen. I think she'll probably be going for Leo or one of the others. So yeah, we'll have to see what happens there. And I think they had to do that with the film, really kill Mr. Darcy off because nobody wanted to see him screw her over. So the only way they felt they could carry the plot line on was by getting rid of him in a different way.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much indeed for coming in and talking to us. So Lizzie's book is called Main Character Lessons from a Real Life Romcom. Will you be going to see the Bridget Jones 4 movie? Actually, I think my daughter's going to see it and she seems really excited and she's sort of 25. So obviously it does resonate with that generation, which I confess somewhat perplexed by. But anyway, no, I don't think I will. It's not calling me. I mean, I like Renennie's Elwagor I totally get your book sounds amazing. Thank you. I'm just not sure I'll go. No, okay

Well, also, I know because one of our colleagues has seen it. I know what's in it. Oh Sorry, they've ruined it for you. Will you be going? Oh, yes Great. No very much. So very much so because I like the humor I understand what Hollywood requires of an ending. But I actually think that Helen Fielding's writing, it just touched me as a younger woman. It was just spot on about self-doubt and just about this extraordinary mask that you wear for the world. I've got a lot of time for her and also I think she is brave, overused word, but she's widowed herself and I think it is probably, it asks a lot of you to find the humour in that to give back to the world.

So I'm absolutely all for her. So yep, I'm there with bells on, with an enormous tub of popcorn and a huge, I think probably, a geroboam Whispering Angel. And Bridget would approve. She would. She'd also approve of a tub of Ben & Jerry's. And I think she'd quite like you to go in your pajamas. I could go in my pajamas or I could wear my big pants. You could do either of those. It's 2025.

I could wear both. Do both? Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations, you've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live, every day, Monday to Thursday, 2-4pm on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale, and if you listen to this you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online, on DAB or on the free Times Radio app.

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