When my Mum first got cancer I must’ve been around the age Jade’s eldest son is now. Too young, in fact, to properly comprehend what was happening, only old enough to sense the tingling presence of fear, the averted looks, the stifled, thin lipped sympathy and muddled, neighbourly compassion. My Mum, Thank God, did not die and whilst her cancer returned several times; each time more frightening for me as my innocence waned to be replaced with dread, she lives still, so I can but imagine the sad confusion of the two bereaved boys.
I knew their Mother, Jade Goody, not especially well, but Jade’s defining characteristic was her easy warmth that ingenuously enveloped folk, so perhaps like many people I felt more engaged by her than normal and feel more saddened by her death than I ought. I dislike the fetishisation of grief that accompanied the death of Jade’s forebear, The Princess of Wales, it makes me uncomfortable as I query its sincerity. Sentimentality is often called the unearned emotion and intrusive carnivals of public mourning unsettle me. In the case of Jade Goody however it is understandable to feel morose, she was a young mum from an awful background who got a break and shrewdly capitalised on it.
For a time we shared management and we met when she came to see several shows of mine at the Edinburgh festival about five years ago. We all hung out, me my Mum, Jade, some people from the agency and a few of my mates. She was a right laugh, she joined in with everyone and created a garrulous giddy vibe in bars and cars that elevated the perfunctory time between shows into something which retrospectively seems more special now than it did then. Most of all though I was impressed with how she formed an immediate and genuinely sweet bond with my Mother, chuckling and chatting with the effortless intimacy that strong yet tender women frequently conjure and which has umbrellad me from anxiety throughout my life. She also came on a few of my dopey TV shows in later years where she filled the room with her ebullience and wicked laugh connecting with the audience in a way that most skilled showman can only dream of.
One of the charges often levelled at Jade was that she was just a normal girl with no trade or practiced skills. Well people didn’t care and our heroes are not prescribed to us, we have the right to choose them and the people chose Jade. Fame has long been bequeathed by virtue of wealth and birth and this was the first generation where it was democratically distributed by that most lowbrow of modern phenomena – Reality Television. She was a person who, I think due to her class always had the propensity to irk people. When Big Brother 3 made her famous she was vilified in the paper and bullied in the house but through her spirit she won people back round and became a kind of Primark Princess with perfumes and fitness videos and endless media coverage – because people were interested in her. They remain interested. One of my best friends, a woman in her mid twenties is genuinely heartbroken at the death of Jade, herself a Mother from a working Class background she obviously connects with this sad narrative in a way that she doesn’t seem to with J-Lo or Jennifer Aniston or Posh Spice most likely because of Jade’s authenticity and accessibility.
I was working on a Celebrity Big Brother spin off show when Jade returned to the house and through unschooled social clumsiness blundered into a whooped up race row. As I said at the time, the incident where Shilpa Shetti was poorly treated by a group of young women was not an example of the sickening scourge of racism but simply a daft lack of education. Jade was a tough girl but utterly lacking in the malice upon which true prejudice depends. The slick of spilled newspaper ink and the cathode conveyed H-bomb that followed this innocuous event was the real crime. Jade was made the focus of a debilitating wave of righteous loathing and condemnation, a gleefully indignant storm of trumped up wrath that served the cause of racial harmony not one iota; but that was never it’s intention. The intention was sacrifice. Well now Jade Goody is no more. Claimed by cancer, a disease often brought on by extreme stress. When my mother was sick someone unkindly informed me that her illness was my fault, induced by my bad behaviour and for a long time I believed it.
I’m glad that Jade’s death has been handled with saccharine mittens by the papers, she lived and died in the glare of their interest and doubtless benefited from it hugely at times. I recall her tearstained face pegged across some rag as she endlessly sought to be forgiven by the media her misconstrued conduct had so incensed and it made me a little angry. She wanted to be accepted, loved, redeemed, and now through her early death, she is. I hope some of the lessons of this modern Fairy Tale are learned, that the people who aspired to be like Jade observe the price she paid. I hope her sons are ok and that on some imperceptible level contrition is felt by the media that gave Jade Goody everything.
And I mean everything.
Beautiful, thoughtful and sensitive. Thanks – a much more genuine and touching tribute than the acres of cliche in the tabloid press. I had a lot of time for Jade – sure she screwed up at times, (who doesn’t) but she came across as a real, funny and spontaneous girl who absolutely loved her boys.
Thank you for articulating my very own thoughts. Just beautiful x
Beautifully written and tragically sad… Heartbreaking really. My prayers go out to Jade’s family and friends….both here and those already gone.
Russell, you have a way with words that can reach the darkest parts of our soul. Thank you for that gift.
Very eloquently put Russell. I’m sad for her and her boys, I too have been very ill and have a 9 year old so I can really empathise with all this. However the media circus just irritates me. The media was both Jade’s best friend and worst enemy at the same time. I really hope they leave her to rest in peace and her family to get on with normal lives now she has gone…
There’s so much more to you than I had realised… :-)
All the very best x
Very well written. Has left my heart aching.
Beautifully honest and warming. Thank you for sharing. xxx
Really lovely!
It is amazing what power we hae through written or spoken words and you did it beautifully.
My uncle was recently told around the same time Jade was that his cancer is terminal, i think this is one reason hy the Jade Goody story really hit a nerve with me. At the moment my uncle is still with us. He is 45 and has a wife and 3 children. The youngest is young enough to understand her dad is ill but being only 8 has not een told exactly what is wrong with her dad.
I feel blessed with every day my uncle is still with us, even if it is not for long now. Jade Goody is no at peace and no longer in pain. Which is a wonderful feeling, even if very sad.
xXx
It’s wonderful to see someone who it’s incredibly funny and charming be so heartfelt at the same time. It’s another side I’ve not seen before – you’re wonderful and so was this piece. It’s very sad this tragedy that’s happened. I’m facing something similar with a friend, my best friend was diagnosed with the same cancer yesterday – but I’m there to make her laugh and to hold her hand. Thanks for the words Russell, just brilliant.
Beautiful and spot on – I don’t think anyone has said anything more true about the situation.
Thank you for posting this!
xx
Very beautifully and respectfully written Russel :) I lost my mum to cancer 6 years ago, when I was 19. Not by far the same situation, but stories like this seem to get to me a bit more than any other. I have seen my neighbour kids, then 12 and 9, loose their mother to an unknown disease a few years back and I can’t tell you how heartbroken they were.
I applaude Jade for taking everything she could from an awful situation, with the paps hounding her like that. Not for her, but for the benefit of her children. I did not follow her as closely, but from what I have seen and heard, and now read in this fab piece of yours, she was a strong and vibrant person with nothing but good intentions. May she rest in peace.
Thank you Russel, for writing this amazing piece in her memory. It makes us stop and think about it for a little while and we all need to do that sometimes.
Very poignant – my heart goes out to those millions of people currently in the same situation; it must be torturous and totally unfathomable as to how they cope.
Dear Russell,
Thank you for your openess and insight into such a tragic story. I have two sons about the same age as Jades beautiful boys and i too felt so very sad when Jade lost her life to cancer, much love to you and your mum x
i am writing this through tear stained eyes, i cant get over the fact that someone so young has lost her life and left 2 little boys.
Her death will not be in vain, as they have said…she has done more for the awearness of cancer and the need to have smear tests than any goverment campain could ever do. she has also influenced me to give up smoking, which i have sucessfully done…Thank you Jade, you may have saved my life.
Beautifully written Russell.
Very eloquently put. I’m sick of hearing people speaking ill of her, even now she’s dead, it’s good to read something like this.
Beautiful, Russ.
My lover died last year suddenly and my daughter has dealt with it so well (he wasn’t her dad but he lived with us most of the time so they were really close). Jade’s kids are lucky to have love and 3D security around them, and an eternal soul of love beaming at them.
When my lover died, I noticed that something huge was wrong with our culture, in that we celebrate birth, yet we “just don’t talk about death”. Well, fuck it, Russ, we do bloody talk about death and I did nothing BUT talk about it until I got to a point of peace with it. I just wove it into the great tapestry of my life. I am ecstatic that Jade chose to alter this ridicularse cultural preconception that death is somehow separate from life. I actually feel really proud of her, and honour her essence.
I feel for her kids, and I also know they’ll be great, too. My daughter has blossomed since our drama in ways I couldn’t have imagined. The same will happen with Jade’s kiddies, in time.
In my upcoming book, Ecstatic Beings I’ve written a section on death and our culture. It’s life, there is no end and there is no beginning…
I love what u do Russ, yet more — I love who u really are. I’m prob going to stop estalking u soon, too ;-) Look out for my book Evie’s Kitchen that I sent to your management, there’s a recipe in honour of your hair in there.
Bliss u, Russ.
Revel In Paradise, Jade and Admmm
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