Death through a lens

PRESENT TENSE:WHEN OK! MAGAZINEthis week published a Jade Goody official tribute issue, almost as many people bought it as pointed out that, ahem, she isn't actually dead yet and that to put "In loving memory" under the title might be just a little vulgar and insensitive.

So, the magazine that had paid for the exclusive rights to Goody's last months of life released a statement saying the family had been in touch to say that they are extremely grateful for the support that OK!has provided during this distressing period. OK! Magazine– just there as a shoulder to cry on. And every teardrop sounds like the ring of a till.

There are a lot of people who find the spectacle of Goody's public death to be quite undignified on everybody's part – the press's, the public's, Goody's. Some of that has been expressed in a disdain for the fact that she is famous in the first place. Rod Liddle summed it up neatly in the Spectatorlast month when he wrote: "Her semi-survival as someone who achieved a sort of fame for the price of having displayed her incalculable stupidity on television – she done all right for a time, she was lovin' it, game show here, mini-doc there – lasted longer than most would have expected. This was down not to even the remotest vestiges of talent or even likability on her behalf, but to her unerring ability to lurch towards catastrophe at every juncture, whether the camera was pointed her way or not. Catastrophe born most usually of that aforementioned staggering ignorance."

It has always been easy to write Goody off as stupid, a pin-up of our dumb century. Yet, it’s not so straightforward as that. Because it has been clear for some time that Jade Goody has been anything but stupid. She may not be particularly educated or articulate or anything else that journalists tend to equate with intelligence. And it is right that she lacks likability; that she has, in fact, often proven herself to be positively dislikable. But she is not talentless. She may not have the old-fashioned type of talent – to sing a song or write a book or speak words into a camera without freezing – but she has a talent. It is for turning her life into a commodity.

In 2002, when she did Big Brother, Goody came fourth in a series during which she went from being a hate-figure to minor heroine thanks to the whims of a British public that likes to think it believes in fair play but actually just enjoys the cruel cat-and-mouse nature of such games. Throughout the show, she had presented herself not only as having a nasty streak, but to be utterly stupid. "Rio de Janeiro, ain't that a person?" she asked. It's a classic line of sorts.

She was finally voted out and should, by rights, have disappeared after that, to be last seen stumbling from a nightclub appearance having been of no interest to either punters or paparazzi. But it didn’t happen. Instead she became something else entirely, bigger than merely famous. She became a brand. In 2007, it was estimated that she earned £4.5 million. That was £1.5 million more than was taken in by Davina McCall, the presenter of Big Brother. In 2007, she returned to Big Brother for one of its celebrity specials. This time, when bullying Indian contestant Shilpa Shetty, she proved that the nasty streak had hardened. It was idiotic behaviour, but the irony was that in the interim years she had proven herself to be quite brilliant in a way. Her perfume had become a bestseller; her (ghosted) autobiography sold enormous amounts; the former dental nurse had become a fixture on the covers of the magazines that pile high in dentists’ waiting rooms. And how had she done this? Because she had spotted a Goody-shaped hole in the market.

She can thank the 1990s gaggle of It-girls. Supposedly famous for little but being famous, these were spoiled, dislikable toffs who were born with money but no class. Jade Goody came along and turned the idea of the It-girl entirely on its head. She was famous for very little other than being a dippy also-ran in Big Brother. But there are 145 of those in Britain now, and almost all of them dropped off the media radar within a fortnight. Not Goody. She turned her life into her talent. She sold it as soap opera. She portioned it out, offered it up. Relationships, births, separations, boob job, business ventures. And now, her death.

She has been on the scene for just seven years, about as long as the average drama series. And now this story is coming to an utterly bizarre ending. But it has been dramatic and horribly compelling. She has always seemed to understand that better than anyone.

shegarty@irishtimes.com