Ten years after her death, Jade Goody is back in the national consciousness, thanks to a compelling TV documentary series exploring her life and the impact she had on celebrity culture. Hard to watch at times – shocking, heartbreaking, thought-provoking – Channel 4’s series Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain looks at the effect Jade had and how our world has changed since she first burst on to our screens in 2002.
Jade’s reality TV fame marked a new dawn, which felt fresh and exciting – a cultural free-for-all in which anyone could become a star. But covering this new breed of celebrity quickly became a blood sport for tabloid editors and Jade was vilified, abused and ridiculed. Before social media, the language used to describe her in the press was trolling in the most public form.
The documentary reminds us just how much TV has changed too – some of the scenes aired on Big Brother were, morally and tonally, so far removed from anything acceptable nowadays– from a drunk Jade being goaded into taking off all her clothes during strip poker (which led to more tabloid name-calling), to the infamous race row between her, Danielle Lloyd, Jo O’Meara and Shilpa Shetty during her return to the house for Celebrity Big Brother. Watching that back, it’s hard to believe it wasn’t pulled. (No surprise then that producers now admit they didn’t know how to deal with it.)
Then there was Jade’s mum (arguably part of the reason Jade became so dislodged, angry and accusatory during that disastrous second stint in the Big Brother house was because she could see Jackiey, also in there with her, embarrassing herself ). Would Jackiey, who had struggled with addiction, pass a psych test to get on a reality show today? While not ideal, there are safeguards in place for contestants on programmes like Love Island – alcohol is limited and far more robust mental health support is in place.
But one of the thorniest questions raised is the extent to which Jade controlled her image versus how much she was exploited by the media. In one way, she wrote her own narrative and was the UK’s first ‘influencer’ with product launches, book deals and a cut from staged paparazzi shots. But the sad irony is that her biggest influence was felt through her death, aged 27, from cervical cancer – with400,000 more women booking smear tests than before(although, sadly, attendance is now at a 19-year low in the UK, according to cancer charity Jo’s Trust).
Knowing Jade, she would have been incredibly moved by the reaction her story has caused after so many years. Being loved made her feel accepted in a way she never was growing up. Part of her charm, right to the bitter end, was her unerring honesty. When I wrote her first two books, both memoirs, she would sit on my bed and tell me everything – whether that was making herself sick because she didn’t want to be ‘fat Jade’ any more, accidentally tattooing her eyebrows so they looked like ‘slugs’ (her word) or crying after learning her dad had died in a KFC toilet from a drug overdose.
Jade was the ultimate champion of the underdog. Whenever she was knocked down, she’d fight her way back up until she was firmly back in the public’s affection. This documentary is just further proof of that. Yet it has struck a chord, not just through the moving accounts from people who knew her, but because her life mirrored the political and cultural landscape. Jade started as the embodiment of Blair’s meritocratic Britain – seeming proof that anyone could be anything. But her death, played out so starkly and publicly, was set against the continuing backdrop of the Iraq war and phone-hacking scandals – highlighting much darker aspects of our public life.
Jade was the reality star who changed Britain; I’m glad her final TV fame offers her the acceptance she desperately craved.
Visitjostrust.org.uk. ‘Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain’ is available on All 4