Dying British TV star marries - RIP March 22 #6; wedding video #8
Dying British TV star marries as cameras roll
52 minutes ago
LONDON (AFP) - Dying reality TV star Jade Goody married her fiance on Sunday in the latest installment of her very public fight with terminal cancer which has enchanted and unnerved the British public in near equal measure.
Goody, 27, who found fame after appearing in the show "Big Brother" in 2002, wed fiance Jack Tweed in a lavish ceremony and reception at a country house hotel north of London, her publicist Max Clifford confirmed.
Their big day -- media rights for which sold for a reported one million pounds (1.1 million euros, 1.4 million dollars) -- was organised in the nine days since Tweed proposed to her in hospital when her illess was diagnosed as terminal.
It was a "happy ceremony with lots of tears, lots of smiles, lots of laughter ... (a) very beautiful, very moving service," Clifford said. He added that the bride had taken painkillers to get her through the day.
Goody has defended her decision to live out in the public eye what will likely be her last weeks, saying the money she earned would help provide for her two young sons, aged five and four.
"I've lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I'll die in front of them," the star, who has lost her hair after chemotherapy for cervical cancer, told last week's News of the World newspaper.
"I know some people don't like what I'm doing, but at this point I really don't care what other people think. Now, it's about what I want."
Goody's approach has prompted an agonised debate in Britain about the rights and wrongs of such a public death.
Some commentators admire her fortitude and determination to protect her children.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, told Sky News: "A lot of people say: 'Well, it's better if she did everything in quiet.'
"But I think she's made a decision that she wants the last months of her life to teach people something."
Others, though, see something ghoulish in the volume of newsprint devoted to her in recent days.
"There are precedents for the place that Jade Goody occupies in modern British life -- people once used to queue at fairgrounds to watch human freaks," the Guardian said in an editorial on Tuesday.
"But her fame really is a story of our own media age".
Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has described Goody's plight as a "tragedy", adding: "Everyone who suffers cancer has the thoughts of me, and I think the whole country, over what they've got to go through."
Exceptionally, Justice Secretary Jack Straw also stepped in to ensure that Tweed, 21 -- freed from jail last month after attacking a teenager with a golf club -- can spend his wedding night with Goody, despite it breaching his bail terms.
Goody's rise to fame underlines the huge popularity that reality television shows have built up in Britain in the last decade.
On her first "Big Brother" appearance, the ex-dental nurse from south London came fourth and was best known for her loud mouth and lack of general knowledge, referring to East Anglia, an area of England, as "East Angular".
She later released an autobiography and her own perfume before returning as a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother" in 2007.
This saw her spend weeks being filmed in a house with contestants including Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, who she referred to as "Shilpa Poppadom", sparking a major race row in Britain and India.
Goody's career subsequently nose-dived. Last year, she appeared in the Indian version of "Big Brother" -- "Bigg Boss" -- but pulled out after being diagnosed with cancer.
Shetty has said she is "sad" about the news, telling ITV on Thursday: "I really want people to forget the past and I really want them to pray and send her good wishes because that's something that will give her energy."
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Reality TV star Jade Goody has got married after being told by doctors she may only have months to live. The day before the ceremony, she kissed her fiance, Jack Tweed, for photogaphers.
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Earlier, the star's bridesmaids arrived at her house wearing flesh-coloured bathing caps in a show of solidarity with the bride, who has been undergoing chemotherapy.
British reality TV star Jade Goody loses cancer fight
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2009...h-reality.html
British reality TV star Jade Goody loses cancer fight
Last Updated: Sunday, March 22, 2009 | 10:17 AM ET
The Associated Press
British reality TV star Jade Goody, a dental assistant whose whirlwind journey from poverty to celebrity to tragedy became a national soap opera, has died.
The 27-year-old had cervical cancer and died in her sleep early Sunday at her home in Essex, southeast England, her publicist Max Clifford said.
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Jade Goody poses in 2006 with her autobiography in a London bookstore. (Yui Mok/Associated Press)
Goody gained fame at 21 in 2002 when she joined the reality television show Big Brother, in which contestants live together for weeks and are constantly filmed.
Loud and brash, she became a highly divisive star — initially mocked as an ignorant slob, then celebrated as a forthright everywoman by a hungry tabloid press.
It was a pattern of praise and condemnation that followed her for the rest of her life. Goody sparked debate about race, class and celebrity in Britain.
For some, Goody was a survivor who had overcome a tough childhood in a poor London district. Her father was absent and often in jail, and her mother struggled with drug addiction.
But she was also reviled in the press during her stint on Big Brother for her weight, her big mouth and her apparent lack of general knowledge — she branded the English region of East Anglia "East Angular" and asked whether it was abroad.
She didn't win the show, but she did become a celebrity, earning millions through television and magazine appearances, an autobiography, a perfume and a series of exercise videos.
It was during a followup stint on a celebrity version of Big Brother in 2007 that Goody was labelled a racist bully for her treatment of another contestant, Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.
Goody bad-mouthed Shetty's cooking of Indian food, mocked her accent and referred to her as "Shilpa Poppadom." While complaints against the show skyrocketed, so did ratings.
'I argue like that with everybody'
Goody's treatment of Shetty sparked anger in India and Britain — even becoming the topic of debate during a House of Commons question-and-answer session with then-prime minister Tony Blair.
A major sponsor suspended its advertising deal with Celebrity Big Brother, and a chain of perfume shops pulled a Goody-endorsed fragrance, ironically named "Shh..."
After television viewers voted to evict Goody from the show, Goody — herself of mixed race — insisted she wasn't a racist.
"I argue like that with everybody. It wasn't just because of the colour of her skin that I was that aggressive," she told Britain's GMTV.
After the eviction, the Indian Tourism Office invited Goody to travel to the country. She did, visiting charity projects and later agreeing to appear on an Indian version of the show.
"The people of India have only seen a small part of me and I'd like to show them that there is more to me," Goody said. "I'm a mother of two, a businesswoman. I can't be all that bad."
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While fighting cancer, Jade Goody and her fiance, Jack Tweed, kiss in front of her home in southern England on Feb. 21, a day before their wedding. (Chris Radburn/Associated Press)
It was during filming of the show in the summer of 2008 that Goody received a diagnosis of cervical cancer by telephone from a doctor in Britain. The camera captured the deeply personal moment, which was shown repeatedly on TV in Britain, though not in India.
The progress of her illness was chronicled in detail in the tabloid press and weekly magazines, to the unease of many.
"Goody isn't rich or famous because she won the lottery: she's rich and famous because we bought all those papers and magazines and ghosted books with her on the cover, because we watched her television series, because we cheered when she was good and booed when she was bad, because we sat around discussing her over lunch," wrote columnist India Knight in the Sunday Times.
"Now she's dying, she's making us all feel bad, so we want her to go away, like a broken toy that's stopped being fun."
Sold rights to February wedding
In February, a bald and frail Goody married fiance Jack Tweed in an elaborate event at an elegant countryside hotel outside London. She reportedly sold the photos for more than $1 million US.
Goody defended being paid for interviews and photo shoots.
"People will say I'm doing this for money," she said. "And they're right, I am. But not to buy flash cars or big houses — it's for my sons' future if I'm not here.
"I don't want my kids to have the same miserable, drug-blighted, poverty-stricken childhood I did."
Before her rise to fame, Goody worked for a period as a dental nurse. She had an unhappy childhood in a poor south London neighbourhood.
Her father was a heroin addict who served jail time for robbery and died in 2005, and her mother is a former crack addict who lost the use of an arm in a motorcycle accident.
While many empathized with Goody as she had surgery and chemotherapy in the public eye — filming part of the experience for another TV series — she inspired vitriol in others. A website was even set up, devoted to predicting when she would die.
In February 2009, Goody's publicist said the cancer had spread to her liver, bowel and groin.
Goody is survived by Tweed and her sons, Bobby and Freddie, with an ex-boyfriend, television presenter Jeff Brazier. She also is survived by her mother, Jackiey Budden.
Budden told reporters Sunday: "Family and friends would like privacy at last."
© The Canadian Press, 2009
