Helen Fielding wins Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries (Vintage) has won the 2017 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, making it third time lucky for the author. Fielding was previously shortlisted in 2000 for Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and in 2014 with Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (both Vintage).

Speaking for the judges, Everyman’s Library publisher David Campbell said Fielding's latest instalment  - featuring Bridget unexpectedly pregnant - was "laugh-out-loud funny" and "fun, witty and engaging, featuring the wonderfully likeable Bridget Jones who continues to connect with readers more than two decades after her inception".

Fielding said: "I'm completely overjoyed to win the pig. It's the third time I've been nominated and I’ve been hoping for this moment for years.  I'm like one of those people who keeps nearly winning an Oscar and then having their hopes smashed to the ground. But at last the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse pig is mine. I'm very proud and intend to boast about it for as long as possible to anyone who will listen."

In honour of the win a locally-bred Gloucestershire Old Spot pig has been named "Bridget Jones’s Baby", and Fielding will "be introduced to" it in a ceremony at Hay Festival. Fielding also receives a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, and a set of the Everyman’s Library PG Wodehouse collection.

The author joins a list of previous winners including Alexander McCall Smith, Howard Jacobson, Marina Lewycka, Ian McEwan and the late Sir Terry Pratchett. Her win follows her fictional character Bridget Jones' controversial place on the Woman's Hour Power List last year.

Campbell was joined on the 2017 shortlist was chosen by a panel of judges comprising broadcaster and author James Naughtie, Everyman’s Library publisher David Campbell, and vice president of the Hay Festival and director of National Trust Wales Justin Albert.