The parallels between Bridget Jones and her spiritual forerunner Ilene Powell, whose rollicking 1920s diary was discovered in a Bristol charity shop this week, grow eerier by the day.

While the journal, which was taken to a branch of Oxfam by a family friend, showed that Ilene - then a spirited 17-year-old - was as keen on flirting and as troubled by her weight as Helen Fielding's fictitious heroine, the facts of her life reveal that she was every bit as attracted to the wrong sort of chap as Bridget herself.

Powell, who was not averse to a drink or a smoke, was born into a wealthy Bristol merchant family on January 28, 1908.

After a privileged upbringing during which she somehow found time for tea dances between shopping trips and visits to the theatre, Powell finally settled down in 1940.

She was 32 - the same age Bridget was when she met lover Mark Darcy - when she married Jack Woodley, one of the many gentlemen she referred to in her 1925 diary.

An entry for January 1 reads: "Came home from London by road after five weeks' holiday in town. Had lunch with the Levis at Cricklewood and tea at Reading.

"Met Mr Woodley in Reading cafe."

Another one, dated six weeks later, says: "Jack Woodley pinched car and took me to White Ladies. Danced with all the lads as usual ... "

By this time, it seems, Woodley was growing increasingly fond of her.

"Monday 9 February: Jack Woodley called at 10o'c this a.m. to wish me goodbye before going back to Reading."

They married, but the marriage lasted only four years and was dissolved because of Woodley's adultery.

She had no children and lived much of her life alone, eventually retiring to the seaside town of Clevedon, Somerset.

"She was a real character," said Nick Hastings, the family friend who took the diary to the Oxfam shop.

"She used to get up to a lot of things that I wouldn't want to go into.

"I think she enjoyed her life very much - she was an absolute riot. She liked to smoke and drink.

"She was a feisty character and was full of life right to the end."

The woman Bridget might have adopted as a role model died of a heart attack at Ham Green Hospital near Pill, Bristol, on May 17 1985.

She left her flat to Mr Hastings' sister Gillian, and he inherited it when she died.

Until this week, the diary had lain dusty and unread in his attic.