Reality TV as a matter of life and death

Britain was plunged into what might be called shallow mourning on Sunday after the death of Jade Goody, whose life might stand as a parable for the state of the nation’s culture in the first decade of the 21st century. Ms Goody was 27 and had been suffering from cervical cancer.

Inside seven years Ms Goody became successively famous, infamous and then – through her final illness – a kind of national heroine. All this was achieved through the power of reality television.

The news led the BBC’s breakfast headlines on Sunday and both Gordon Brown, the prime minister, and David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, rushed to pay tribute. Mr Brown called her “a courageous woman both in life and death”.

Ms Goody was a dental nurse from an appalling background in south London – her parents were both drug addicts – and shot to fame after appearing in the television show Big Brother in 2002. Her trademark was big-mouthed ignorance: she had heard of Rio de Janeiro but wasn’t sure who he was. But this was combined with an honest vulnerability that brought out the protective instincts among the watching millions.

Barely literate, she was, however, nowhere near as stupid as some thought. She milked her fame skilfully, with her own perfume, well-paid appearances as the wicked queen in pantomime and a surprisingly well-received ghosted autobiography.

Thus Ms Goody was able to ascend to the next rung of the ladder, enabling her to appear on the reality programmes supposedly reserved for people who had achieved fame in some other way: Celebrity Wife Swap, Celebrity Stars in their Eyes and, indeed, Celebrity Big Brother.

In the last of these came her downfall. Annoyed by a fellow contestant, the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, she indulged in some mild playground abuse that was construed as racist, and met the full fury of modern British moralising. Her career, if that is the word, appeared to be over. However, she was already starting to achieve minor redemption – appearing on the Indian version of the show Bigg Boss – when, in August last year, her cancer was diagnosed. She decided that her death, like her adult life, would be conducted in full public view. This was arranged by the publicist Max Clifford, a man with the same ethereal fame as his clients.

He achieved deals, believed to total well over £1m, for exclusive rights to her story and pictures of her wedding to one Jack Tweed, who was allowed to attend only by special permission from Jack Straw, the justice secretary. Mr Tweed was under curfew, having just been released from prison for attacking a boy with a golf club. The money, she insisted, was intended to secure the future of her two small sons, sired by another former reality-show contestant, Jeff Brazier.

The news was announced by Ms Goody’s mother Jackiey, who added, without irony: “Family and friends would like privacy at last.” People soon began arriving with flowers.

“You needed TV to kick-start this,” said Steve Barnett, professor of communications of the University of Westminster. “But to keep it going TV alone was no good. It needed more, not just the tabloids but the celebrity mags, Heat – which for teenage girls is a bible – OK, Hello. It’s a unique combination which we never had before.”

Optimists, like Mr Cameron, thought Ms Goody’s legacy would be a greater understanding of the need for early detection of cervical cancer: demand for smear tests has soared in recent weeks. Realists thought the public would be on to the next sensation within a month.