Was Mark Darcy based on Keir Starmer? Here’s the definitive answer

The clean-cut candidate for Labour-leader may suit the part of the Bridget Jones character, but is it a truth universally acknowledged?It is a rumour that has been circulating for some time: Mark Darcy, of Bridget Jones fame, immortalised by Colin Firth, had a real-life prototype. Clean-cut and handsome, the image of self-control, taciturn to the point of humourlessness, but underneath possessed of a dry wit and a passionate humanist heart: plainly, he was based on Keir Starmer. The Sunday Times acknowledged this weekend that it wasn’t the first to float the idea – it has been put to Starmer before and he said he had no idea. Helen Fielding has also been asked about it and demurred to confirm or deny.Surely we can figure this out by a process of elimination: Bridget Jones’s Diary, the novel, was published in 1996, although the character was created by Fielding for a newspaper column a couple of years beforehand. This was around the time of Starmer’s famous hot-lawyer case – defending the little guys, environmentalists Helen Steel and David Morris, against the ultimate corporate behemoth, McDonald’s, which sued them over a leaflet they distributed criticising the company’s practices. Before the McLibel case, Starmer already had solid David-and-Goliath credentials: he acted as a legal observer at the Wapping strikes in the mid-80s and represented the NUM. Continue reading…
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