The dysfunctional but profitable upbringing
Saturday March 28 2009
As the Princess Diana death industry has proved, there is still profit to be made from the Jade Goody phenomenon, even in death. Before the funeral has even taken place -- and what a media frenzy that's set to be -- publishers are scrambling over rights to her life story, trustees of her estate are putting together proposals for a biographical film and her own personal diary of her final days looks set to be an instant bestseller.
John Blake Publishing have renamed her second autobiography, Catch a Falling Star, published last September, as Jade: Fighting to the End, which is planned for release this weekend in direct competition with her official cancer diary, Forever in My Heart, written as a "love letter" to her two boys and published by Harper Collins.
A two-part television to be broadcast by Living TV includes interviews with friends as well as archive footage.
Meanwhile, the family are said to want a film made of her life. She had a difficult childhood, frequently missing school to support her disabled lesbian mother Jackiey, who lost the use of her left arm and an eye in a motorbike accident. Her drug- addicted father Andrew left home when she was two years old. He died of a drug overdose aged 42 in 2005.
Her rags-to-riches story may appear to have all the elements of a blockbuster. Terry Prone doesn't agree.
"A movie of Jade's life won't work," she says. "None of the Princess Di movies worked. She was pretty and appealing and anyone who played her appeared like a discount version. Jade Goody was not that attractive, so who would play her and how would you portray her many mistakes?"
When she first hit our TV screens in Big Brother 2002, Jade came to prominence for making a series of gaffes. She was pilloried for asking whether the UK region 'East Angular' (East Anglia) was abroad, appearing naked and having a drunken sexual encounter with another contestant.
While filming the celebrity version of Big Brother in 2007 she was branded a racist bully for her treatment of fellow celebrity Shilpa Shetty whom she called 'Shilpa Poppadum'.
After a storm of controversy, the pair reconciled and Jade went on to star in the Indian Big Brother programme in an effort to redeem herself. On her second day in the Bigg Boss House, she discovered she had cervical cancer and returned home.
