The further adventures of Bridget Jones

Every once in a while a person will surprise you, becoming a screen or fictional character and embodying that persona more richly than even the film director, or fiction writer, would have thought possible. Isabel Losada is one such person""attractive, single mother, not averse to a fling on the side, and taken with the idea of doing something that will change the world just a mite.

Now, think innocently-blonde-but-not-dumb and you have Goldie Hawn in movie after movie playing the same wide-eyed role, or turn to Helen Fielding and the character of Bridget Jones, and between the two of them you have Losada, who, in a moment of vacant musing, asks Jeeves on her Internet monitor for an engagement for the weekend, and finds herself demonstrating (after suitable time spent wondering what she should wear) outside the Chinese embassy in London against China's occupation of Tibet.

So, all right, people in the Western world give in to maverick whims, and Losada will soon tire of her pre-occupation with an alien culture about which she knows zilch, right? Wrong. Losada is at a loose end, Tibet is a tantalising cause, and if she doesn't know enough, she'll soon amend that. In pursuit of enlightenment, Losada begins to knock on the doors where she hopes to find nirvana or the truth about Tibet, whichever is applicable.

But what's knowledge without field experience. Losada feels if she is to play a part""any part""for Tibet (liberation? awareness?) she must know more herself, and before you can say om mani padme hum, she's in Kathmandu at the start of an adventure that begins to read like Bridget Jones' third coming.

Almost the only thing she does in Kathmandu, apart from the mandatory sightseeing, is distribute alms to the poor (barely the equivalent of a Starbucks coffee, she reasons on several occasions) with Western largesse and, quite typically, falls in love with a monk, an abbot who turns up to be her mentor and guide but, alas, not lover.

This extraordinary feat remains to the end inexplicable to her when she is exercised about why he won't agree to a romp in the hay, to which she appears more than willing. The most their romance will lead to is holding hands stealthily in the cover of darkness, and that too much later, in Delhi, by when she's finally figured out that there can be caring without lust.

From Kathmandu to Lhasa by road (she falls sick along the way), discovering the Tibetan capital by herself (no posters of the Dalai Lama, incredible stories of stoicism and torture), the flight back to Kathmandu and then London prove only an appetiser for Losada, who now decides to launch a campaign for an awareness of Tibet. First, funds are organised, courtesy pledges against parachuting from an aircraft. An appointment with the Chinese ambassador ends in a rude stand-off (and one cannot help marvelling at her naivete: did she expect the official Chinese representative to do a volte-face in conversation with her?).

Clearly, more needs to be done to highlight the suppression of human rights in Tibet and the house arrest of the Panchen Lama somewhere in China. Creating press awareness requires an event, to be handled professionally by a public relations agency.

For some time, Losada flirts with the idea of posing (even addressing the press) in the nude, but the "Tits for Tibet" idea is ruled out as merely a stunt. (A company called Cunning Stunts will finally show her the way to creating another stunt, but more about that later.)

Losada decides to launch her own company and website, and for some time is occupied with these, but with few results. Sponsorship is organised, friends contacted, acquaintances take on assignments only to leave.

In the chaotic world of Hawn-Jones-Losada, personal lives and professional causes keep falling apart. Finally, it is decided that a para-jumper will illegally jump off Nelson's column in London, with a huge banner of the Dalai Lama scrolled down its length. That decided, organising it proves somewhat more difficult than anticipated.

There's the waywardness of the weather to take into account, the juggling of the stunt-crew's free dates, calling the press without letting the cops or city administration find out, and hoping that the jump won't end in broken bones or, worse, death.

For a while, Murphy keeps having all the laughs with his Law as everything that can go wrong, does. Finally, however, the stunt does take place, the police are placated, and the pictures make it over the wire around the world. Losada feels vindicated.

But more is in store. The Dalai Lama asks to meet her, and she arrives in Dharamsala for her appointment (after arranging a rendezvous with her phantom lover monk in Delhi on the way). The blurb on the back cover reads: "Then she meets the Dalai Lama ...", leading one to expect fireworks or at least a mid-life crisis or something statutorily important.

Unfortunately, that's when the otherwise engaging account lets you down. It is as if the whole purpose for Losada has been this meeting, the high point of her life and this book. So, that is where it ends""a flashpoint from which nothing emerges, at least as we know it.

While the manner the book ends may be disappointing, for the rest, it's a fairly interesting account, lively, surprisingly lucid, often genuinely funny, and with an eye for detail in the travelogue segments.

For all the superficiality of Losada's approach to Tibet, she manages to serve up a fairly palatable feast for the lay reader, who may otherwise never have bothered with the oppressed region's cry for autonomy. For every reader, she's bound to find a supporter for the Tibet cause, and that is the most satisfying part of the book.

For Tibet, With Love

Isabel Losada
Bloomsbury
Price: £7.99
Pages: 371