It's still the early days of 2019 so apologies for starting off the new year with some shocking - and posisbly life-altering - news. Cher Horowitz, the protagonist, heroine and fashion icon of the 90s classic film Clueless, is not Jewish.

The film's creator Amy Heckerling revealed in an interview with JTA that, despite her very Jewish-sounding name, her very Jewish-seeming dad and her subsequent position in the canon of great Jewish films, Cher was never meant to be Jewish.

“I wasn’t thinking in terms of this being a Jewish story,” Heckerling said in the interview. “I was taking the plot of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ and translating it into that world.

“In my mind, you’re always writing versions of people you know, and to me it felt like I was writing about the daughters of people in show business in L.A."

Heckerling, who also directed other smash hits such as National Lampoon’s European Vacation and Look Who’s Talking, is Jewish however, as are the two stars of the film - Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd - and Mr Hall, the teacher whose love life Cher tries to meddle with. In fact, it was Mr Hall - or the actor who plays him, Wallace Shawn - who apparently came up with the name Cher Horowitz.

I think can hear Clueless fans the world over muttering "as if" right about now....