‘I was Bridget Jones then and I’m Bridget now’: The brutal truth about being single and dating in your fifties

As it’s revealed One Day’s Leo Woodall will join Renee Zellweger and Hugh Grant for Bridget Jones 4, which looks at being single in your older years, Bibi Lynch and Lucy Cavendish debate the pros and cons of being on the dating scene after 50...

Total drag: if you think the dating scene is hard to navigate in your thirties, try doing it two decades later (Alamy)

So Bridget Jones is back – number four. This new film is based on author Helen Fielding’s 2013 novel Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy and will see single (again) 51-year-old BJ (divorced? Widowed? I get confused) enter the brutal world of midlife dating.

Uh oh. I feel sorry for her – because, let me tell you/her, dating in your fifties is nothing like when Jones was last in the dating pool. Believe me, I should know. (In a nutshell, in case Fielding reads this and needs inspiration for a tragedy: I’m almost 58 and my only long-term relationship – between 27 and 31 – ended the day after Diana died.)

In my thirties, dating – like people – was sometimes nerve-racking, sometimes disappointing, sometimes a waste of time, but it was always hopeful and had potential.