I must confess that I came to this book with a slightly heavy heart. What more could there possibly be to discover about a woman whose most intimate details have been the subject of tabloid fodder since the day she emerged, bulging out of her pink satin dress, from the Big Brother house in 2002? Surely this book would be just another exercise in crass commercialism, engineered as a last hurrah for all those publicists, paparazzi and assorted hangers-on in whose interests it was to keep Jade in the public eye until the bitter end.

Exactly how much of Jade: Forever in My Heart was directly written by the Bermondsey bombshell is unclear. The acknowledgements list her mother, Jackiey Budden, her widower, Jack Tweed, a number of close friends as well as her agent Mark Thomas for “helping to pull” these diaries together. At the beginning it reads in a fairly perfunctory tabloid manner, a straightforward chronicle of events and emotions, with certain passages highlighted in italics for effect. But very soon Jade's voice begins to assert itself. And it's quite a revelation.

Sure, there are recognisible Jade-isms. At one point, having just been told that the cancer is in her bowel, liver and lymph nodes, she calls her mother and tells her, “It's all spreaded”, the grammatical oversight helpfully highlighted by the addition of a (sic) to the sentence. Earlier, when talking about a trip to Wales with Jack and her two sons, Bobby and Freddy, she writes: “I want a proper rural English holiday. (Someone just told me that Wales is not in England. Is that true?)”

As the reader progresses, however, such trademark displays of ignorance suddenly no longer ring true. Despite the horrific backdrop of terminal cancer, Jade's innate acumen and intelligence begin to show through. Doubt takes root in the mind. Did she really ever think that East Anglia was “abroad”, or indeed that Wales is in England? Or was she just giving her public what it wanted?

For a woman whose celebrity identity was based on being a loudmouthed liability, these diaries present an unexpectedly mature intellect - not especially erudite or educated, but undoubtably sharp and full of potential. This realisation is part of what makes this book so moving: a sense of what might have been had she lived; but also of a life curtailed by the sad circumstances of her upbringing.

It is striking that, in a childhood fraught with her parents' drug abuse (her mother was a crack addict for several years; her father died aged 42 of an overdose), the theme that she returns to again and again is not abandonment or resentment, but her terrible fear of poverty. Securing a stable and affluent future for her two children is at the heart of everything she does. It is also a constant refrain when writing about Jack Tweed. She forgives him all lairy behaviour and incarcerable offences on the basis that he doesn't want her money. Time and again she offers him her house, or a share of the cash from media interviews. His constant refusals are proof of the true nature of his love for her - and a great source of personal pride and comfort.

She is far from eloquent - but she has no trouble whatsoever expressing herself clearly. And there is one area where she is very clear indeed: there is no misty-eyed, romantic nobility-of-the-noble-poor dogma in this book. Just a strong desire to get herself, and her loved ones, to a much better place. In her “Wish List”, at the back of the book, she sets out her ambitions for her boys: to have Porsches as their first cars, to go to university, to have good jobs “that pay a lot of money”, to eat well and travel. Crucially, “to visit a Third-World country and do things like make mud huts. I want them to realise that they are very lucky boys and not everyone is as lucky as them”.

Her belief that she was spiritually en route to a better place is what sustains her towards the end. Anyone who thought her last-minute christening was a PR stunt will think again if they read this. As her body disintegrates, her mind becomes uncannily clear. As she drifts away, the reader feels a profound and genuine sense of loss.

Jade: Forever in My Heart by Jade Goody
Harpercollins, £15.99; 288 pp Buy the book

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