‘WFH may be OK for the older generation, but for the Bridget Joneses of today it's a sham and a snare – and they'll never meet their Mr Darcy,’ writes Boris Johnson in his latest column for the Daily Mail. The former prime minister referenced Helen Fielding’s heroine, who is portrayed by Renee Zellweger in the films, and her love interest Mark Darcy – played by Colin Firth – as he claimed that young women should return to the office to boost their romantic prospects.
Boris, 60, spoke about how being in the office can lead to workplace romances and finding love as he compared post-pandemic working practices and Labour’s legislation in favour of working from home.
‘When Bridget Jones started to confide in the rest of us about her search for a soulmate, she at least had a place she could look. Like any other mammal, she had a habitat where she could be sure of finding breeding partners,’ he wrote. ‘She had an environment with a reasonable number of heterosexual males self-confident and intelligent enough to find her attractive. She had an office!’
Boris, who met his third wife Carrie through work, added, ‘And now look! Ever since the Covid pandemic, the nation has fallen into the hopeless narcolepsy of “working from home”. Like the housing market, like the planning laws, the whole thing appears to be a plot against the interests of younger people.’
He explained, ‘If the current birth rates are anything to go by, WFH is also proving thoroughly unromantic. I don’t believe Mother Nature is going to stand for it. She is going to want young people back in the office, for all sorts of good evolutionary reasons.’
Boris’ words touched a chord with readers, who pointed out that there’s a major inaccuracy in his claim – Bridget and Darcy didn’t meet through the workplace. Mark, a barrister, is a childhood friend and the son of her parents’ friends and they reconnected after meeting at the annual ‘turkey curry buffet’ party hosted by Bridget’s mother.
‘Bridget Jones didn’t meet Mark Darcy at the office. She did however meet her highly inappropriate boss [Daniel Cleaver, played by Hugh Grant] who ended up being a toxic af boyfriend,’ one commented. Another remarked, ‘I cannot allow him to misrepresent basic plot points of Bridget Jones.’ A third said, ‘So the purpose of women working is to meet “Mr Right”? How quaintly last century.’
And some social media users also reminded Boris that Bridget was ‘sexually harassed’ at both of her workplaces in the movies. Her boss Mr Fitzherbert, nicknamed ‘T**spervert’, openly stared at her chest when she worked as a publicity assistant. In her job as a journalist for news channel Sit Up Britain, her new manager told her, ‘Nobody ever gets fired for shagging the boss’.
Others claimed that the former Tory leader is hardly the poster boy for office romances. He first met Carrie Symonds, 36, around 2010 when she worked as a press officer for the Conservative Party and she campaigned for him in the London Conservative Party mayoral selection that year.
However, it is rumoured that they didn’t embark on a romance until around eight years later when she was Head of Communications for the Conservative Party and he was Foreign Secretary. At the time, he was married to Marina Wheeler, with whom he shares four children – Lara, 31, Milo, 29, Cassia, 27, and Theo, 24.
‘Relationship advice from Boris? Boris Johnson?’ one remarked. Another said, ‘Just when you think he can’t get any more patronising.’
Boris’ comments came ahead of the new film’s release next year. Renee and Hugh will reprise their roles as Bridget and Daniel alongside newcomers Leo Woodall and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the fourth instalment of the franchise. Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy will open in cinemas on Valentine’s Day 2025.