They are everywhere now but at the turn of the century, Jade Goody became the first reality TV star to be famous for being famous.
A decade after her death at the age of 27, the ditzy Essex girl will see her life and legacy pored over again in Channel 4’s Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain.
She rocketed to fame back in 2002 after appearing on Big Brother.
Despite finishing fourth on the reality TV show, Jade left the house a star thanks to her down-to-earth personality and constant “Jadesisms”.
Who can forget when she said: “Where’s East Angular? I thought that was abroad.”
Jade may not have come across as intelligent but she was the first reality star to bank £1million.
And, when she died in 2009 after a fight with cervical cancer, the girl from a council estate in Bermondsey left £5million in her estate for her sons Bobby and Freddie so they would get the education she had missed out on.
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When she died, on Mother’s Day in 2009, then prime minister Gordon Brown called her “a courageous woman both in life and death”, adding: “The whole country admired her determination to provide a bright future for her children.”
Stephen Fry summed her up as “a kind of Princess D from the wrong side of the tracks”.
Jade was born in 1981 and by the time she was two, her dad Andrew left her and her disabled mum Jackiey Budden. He died in 2005 from a drug overdose aged just 42.
She missed much of her schooling to look after her mum, who lost the use of her left arm and eye in a motorbike accident when the future star was a child.
In the three-part series, Jackiey admits Jade went into Big Brother to escape her life. She said: “We were a twisted-up, mucked-up family. She didn’t go in for fame. She went in to get away from me.”
While Love Island makes unknowns famous today, it was Jade who paved the way. At the time of her death, she had three Essex properties without mortgages and had made £500,000 from her best-selling perfume, Shh, £1million from two autobiographies, £150,000 from personal appearances and £50,000 from doing panto.
(Image: PA Archive/PA Images)
But her seven years in the spotlight wasn’t without drama – particularly the race row that engulfed her return to the Big Brother house in the celebrity version in 2007.
Here, we remember the life and legacy of one of our most infamous reality stars.
Her boys
Jade had two sons with TV presenter Jeff Brazier before they split up in 2005. Bobby is now 15 and Freddie is 13.
When she found out that she was dying, Jade did everything she could to make as much money as possible so they could have private school education.
(Image: Getty)
In 2011, Jade’s fortune was nearly wipes out by debts totalling £1.8million because she had paid no income tax for four years before she died.
Bobby has remained in private education in Essex but Freddie is at state school after he struggled to fit in because of his ADHD.
Her death
Jade’s life, and her death, was widely reported in the media. At the time, images of her in a wheelchair, bald and sucking a morphine lollipop to try and dull the pain were splashed across newspapers and our TV screens.
After the racism row, her plight endeared her to the public, who appeared to forgive her. While in hospital, she was baptised alongside her sons and she also married her fiancé Jack Tweed.
(Image: Instagram)
Thousands lined the streets to see her funeral procession, which passed key locations from her life.
She was buried in her £3500 Manuel Mota ivory wedding dress – a gift for Jade’s big day from Harrods boss Mohamed Al-Fayed.
The Jade Effect
Half a million more women than usual took up cervical cancer screenings after Jade’s public battle with the disease.
Medical experts called it “the Jade effect”.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
But 10 years on, screenings have now reached an alarming 20-year low.
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