Jade Goody (1981-2009)

Yes I know – you’re all sick of hearing about her, even in death but I couldn’t let her passing go without saying something, especially about those two-faced rags which made her and then brought her down and finally paid her the most fulsome compliments in death as if she was some sort of saint.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ms Goody, she was a complete nonentity who managed to get onto one of those tedious reality shows and, even more amazingly, managed to win it.

She probably got a slot on ‘Big Brother’ because when she was no doubt interviewed along with thousands of others, she was by a country mile, the thickest person they’d ever encountered. I bet they couldn’t believe their luck.

She thought Rio de Janeiro was a football player. She thought that East Anglia, which she pronounced as East Angular, was an African country. She had no idea what asparagus was and famously declared that she was ‘intelligent but I let myself down because I can’t speak properly or spell.’ She was dirty and had the most awful, blackened feet, of which she was strangely proud, but, and this is where her life story changed, the public and the tabloid press loved her and voted her the winner, allowing her to pick up the £100,000 prize.

A couple of years later, having been transformed by spending a fortune on a makeover, she appeared in Celebrity Big Brother and racially insulted a female Indian movie star. She was pilloried as a racist, especially by the tabloids and her earnings plummeted. Not even a tearful apology on TV got her back into the public’s affections. You can take the girl out of Essex but obviously, you cannot take Essex out of the girl.

Despite the issue not really going away, she managed to hang onto her ‘C’ list celebrity status, most probably being invited to events in the hope she would commit some awful faux pas but at least she remained in the public eye, albeit not as frequently as before.

Now to the current controversy. Should she have allowed cameras to film her battle with cancer, right up to the point of death? She maintained it was to raise money to ensure her children were well educated and wanted for nothing but many observers think it was simply because, in death, as in life, she had craved the cameras. Whatever people thought of her, she’ll certainly be remembered for bringing cervical cancer screening for young girls to the public’s attention and on that score alone, her death was not a waste of a life, indeed, without really knowing, she might save countless others.