Jade Goody died five weeks ago today, but it seems longer. The tabloid news cycle that dominated the final seven months of her life (the last seven years, actually) needs constant feeding, and after a month with nothing to report except “She’s still dead!”, Britain’s most beloved chav has already begun to drift from the mind. I’m not sure who comes off worse: us and our sawn-off attention spans or the limits of her legacy.

It doesn’t help that she didn’t die in an especially newsy way. There wasn’t the shock of James Dean’s crumpled Porsche or any Princess Diana Pont d’Alma conspiracy ­theories to keep the story going. Like most cancer deaths, Goody’s was quiet, predictable and heart-twistingly sad. “Jade didn’t waken at all today,” writes Jackiey, her mother, who had to take over diary duties on this book for the last nine days of her daughter’s life as, obviously, ­systematic organ failure wasn’t ­going to stop Goody getting a final memoir to her publisher on time. “Her breathing got fainter and fainter. And then she died at 3.14am on Mothering Sunday, the 22nd of March, as I held her hand.”

Had Goody, a 27-year-old mother of two, been born in any other decade, chances are we’d never have heard of her. She was the standout player on the third series of Big Brother in 2002, a golden age for reality TV when contestants knew how to play up to the cameras but before we’d seen it all before. She came fourth, but despite her stupidity (she claimed to think Wales was in England), she became the show’s star alumna. Books, magazine deals, perfumes and a row about racism on Celebrity Big Brother in 2007 fed the beast and somehow she went from being ­despised to being adored. The tabs cast her as the nation’s lovable dimwit, and Goody was more than happy to play up to the part.

Ironically, given she tooled much of her later life to suit them, she died at an awkward time for the next day’s papers. Not unlike Princess Diana, actually. Much was written about the parallels between the two, or — more accurately — the ­parallel public reaction of misery-­gorging. But what’s the big mystery? It’s hardly revelatory to point out that death is about the only taboo left. Young people aren’t supposed to die these days, especially young women with handsome sons, enviable hairdos and £100,000 cars. People can’t cope with it.

She was more acquainted with the big D than most, though. Her father, a junkie, was found dead at 42 in the lavatory of a Kentucky Fried Chicken a few years ago. Her mother nearly died in a motorcycle accident that left her without the use of her left arm, and the Bermondsey estate she grew up on was beset with overdoses and knifings. But nothing could prepare Goody for cancer’s tick-tock countdown.

She found out on television, naturally. Forever in My Heart begins with Goody on India’s version of Big Brother, “setting the record straight”, when she is called into the diary room and handed a mobile phone. Her doctor in England tells her she has cancer and she collapses. This moment has been watched hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, but Goody writes that despite all the staring eyes, “When he hung up I sat there feeling lonelier than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

Loneliness becomes the pervading theme. Her mother — a former crack addict — simply goes silent when Goody tells her she might die. Meanwhile, Jack Tweed, her on-off boyfriend (now widower), is sent to jail soon after she is ­diagnosed and Goody spends many nights in bed alone, the sheets stained with blood as her womb starts to disintegrate before it is eventually removed. She feels dirty and desperately ashamed to be no longer a “proper woman”.

But she’s no saint. In fact, she’s a nightmare in many ways, freezing out her friends one minute, demanding their attention the next. Perversely, her celebrity stock rises and Robbie Williams, Michael Jackson and Buckingham Palace send goodwill messages (Elton John, of course, offers her the use of his villa). She’s wonderfully unbothered, though. When she reads a made-up story that she’s been telephoning fellow cancer sufferers Kylie Mino­gue and Trisha Goddard for moral support, she scoffs, “Why would I call complete strangers to talk about my cancer? Pul-lease!” She’s also marvellously gobby when planning her wedding, telling a cowering saleswoman at Armani that “I want a discount because I am getting married and then I am going to die.”

Try as she might she can’t tell her young sons. She says her tummy hurts because she swallowed a tadpole and her hair fell out because she used the wrong shampoo. She spends endless OK! photoshoots in horrific pain, but concedes, “If I wasn’t famous and the magazine weren’t interested I’d feel much worse.” Suddenly she is told she has a month or two to live, so there’s no time to reconcile with estranged family members or have the lavish christening party she wanted. Within a few days she is confined to a hospital bed hallucinating, her body falling apart in front of her, too tired even to cope with her boys a lot of the time. Then she’s gone.

Of course, you don’t expect the polish of John Diamond or Ruth Picardie, so it’s surprising that Goody and her editor have achieved something almost profound in this journal. It’s death laid bare with no literary trickery to make the misery seem “important”. It’s just miserable — and all the more moving for that.

Forever in My Heart by Jade Goody
HarperCollins £15.99 pp288

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