Now in a bold attempt to break away from the Chardonnay-and-shagging Bridget shtick she's publishing a spy spoof called

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Now, in a bold attempt to break away from the Chardonnay-and-shagging Bridget shtick, she's publishing a spy spoof called Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination. Her walk-on part may have had something to do with Kevin Curran, who writes for the show and lives with Fielding They are trying to think of names for the baby. Lucifer and Chlorine have been considered, albeit briefly.Inevitably, Bridget has become a burden for her creator. Fielding is weary of being identified as the madcap singleton Dammit, she was once a serious, black-comic writer. She's even turned up in The Simpsons, where she briefly joined Marge's reading group.

Bridget Jones is now a name as well-known as, say, Sherlock Holmes in the pantheon of fictional figures whom British people regard as their own, and the rest of the world recognises as a form of shorthand for adorable British eccentricity.Fielding has herself achieved such fame. Today, everyone radiates positive energy about the new book, because everyone knows it cannot fail.Her work has become a franchise and a cash cow for her publishers, Picador, and her film friends at Working Title. The two Bridget Jones books have sold countless millions around the world, sat on the British and American bestseller lists for aeons, and sparked off a genre of novels about sloshed and self-pitying young women having shrieky evenings with their zany pals and trying to find a man to distract them from their enslavement to Chardonnay and self-improvement manuals. As Jonathan Cavendish, the producer of the second Bridget Jones movie, brings her news about how the 14-week shoot is going, she widens her cat's eyes until she looks like a little girl being told a big secret, then her face creases up with laughter.Despite the fame and riches, she has not changed a scrap from the girl with the breathy Leeds accent who used to drop into The Sunday Times, 13 years ago, to write witty pieces for the Style section, and you couldn't work for the creak of male heads turning to gaze. She's a strikingly pretty blonde, power-dressed in a formal black jacket that strains across her primigravida tummy, but her demeanour is anything but formal. These media groovers have come to a book launch tonight because the author is their old pal (and the ex-girlfriend of at least two) and one of the sales phenomena of British writing in the past 20 years.Helen Fielding stands demurely by the back wall, greeting friends she hasn't seen for months, because she now lives in Los Angeles, and wishing she could sit down, because she is noticeably pregnant and chronically nauseous (which she pronounces US-style).

The cocktail barmen are making Russian apple martinis at a lick; the entrances and exits are policed by young men amusingly dressed as spies in Bogart raincoats, false moustaches and dark glasses; the expensive canap?are served by melting-eyed beauties; and a pregnant Helena Bonham Carter is holding court, surrounded by laughing gallants and her American boyfriend Tim Burton, the wild-haired visionary behind Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow. Among the thronging drinkers and chatterers, you can see Angus Deayton and John (Spitting Image) Lloyd, Tim McInerney and Mariella Frostrup, Nick Hornby and Sebastian Faulks and the two-man British film industry, Eric Fellner and Richard Curtis But this is not a film premiere. Given that the address is Whitehall, and the venue is a government building with an unfeasibly long name (The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, no less), this is a pretty ritzy party. Towards the end of the act a cheeky young scamp from the balcony asks: "Is the show?" To which an amused Campbell replies: "I'm the warm up act, there'll be a troupe of dancing penguins along in a minute." Every Saturday to 29 November at 2pm (0870 534 4444). Yet for the most part the parents are having a good time."This is exactly what the kids need," a mother tells me at the end, having clocked "press row". I see her point, and have mused on the contrast between the audience reaction to this show and the muted response to some children's theatre extravaganzas to which I have been privy.The only thing that could twist this new venture is a stand up comic for children by children, I know, it's a frightening thought, but perhaps inevitable given the rise of Tweenie pop stars?But the rise of precocity has its upside.