Thousands pay their respects at Jade Goody's funeral

She was not a princess, a pop star or politician. Yet to see the crowds throwing flowers at the hearse that bore Jade Goody's white coffin as it entered St John's Church in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, and the applause that greeted it, you might be forgiven for thinking she was any or all of those things.

She was not. But to the thousands of people from Essex and beyond who had turned out to line the route of the funeral cortege carrying the 27-year-old reality TV star from her childhood home in Bermondsey to the gentrified suburbs of Epping Forest, she was much more.

Although the word "princess" was bandied about, in fact she was one of them, an ordinary girl who had defied the odds: her self-proclaimed ignorance and working-class tastes were badges of defiance and pride.

One of the wreaths spelt out "East Angular" in giant letters, a pointed reference to one of Jade's many widely derided remarks on Big Brother in 2002. Not only did she mispronounce East Anglia; she thought it was a foreign country.

So it seemed fitting that her funeral was a mixture of formal solemnity and kitsch. It began in the rain in Bermondsey, where crowds began throwing flowers in an echo of the funeral of another woman who courted, lived and died in the glare of publicity.

Barry Albin, the funeral director, stopped to release a single white dove to applause. The procession of black limousines, led by a vintage Rolls-Royce, made its way through east London on a pilgrimage to the places that loomed large in Jade's life, such as her grandfather's market stall in the Blue Market in Bermondsey.

As the cortege wound through the narrow country lanes in Upshire n little more than a row of houses overlooking fields on the edge of Epping Forest n where Jade made her home, it resembled a gangland funeral from a long-gone era: the East End was laying to rest one of its own. By the time the hearse pulled up at St John's Church the sun had come out. The sky was blue, birds were singing.

As Max Clifford, the publicist who masterminded coverage of Jade's final days, spoke his tribute inside the church, the people who gathered outside to watch the service on giant screens, although dressed largely in black, were in celebratory mood, lending the funeral the air of a fair.

They were mainly women - the men wore an air of having been dragged along, reluctantly - of all ages. From girls to grandmothers they had come from as near as Loughton and Walthamstow and as far away as Newmarket. To those not caught up in their fervour, the question was: why?

The response to the question was the same time and again: Jade had been, for them, an inspirational figure. "I've followed her ever since Big Brother," said Laura Ford, 26, a supermarket manager who lives near Heathrow.

"She was just an ordinary girl that found her way. If she could do it, anyone could do it."

Audrey Plain, 69, and her friend Sarah Prentice, 41, who had travelled from Newmarket, agreed.

"I think she was fantastic: she was inspiration," said Ms Plain.

"She came from nothing and made something of herself."

Ms Prentice warmed to the theme: "She was honest, always herself and very normal. I think she showed people that you can go somewhere in life."

Inside the church, off limits to all except friends and family, one of Jade's former teachers paid perhaps the most telling tribute.

"Do not think she was unintelligent," said John Finnegan.

"Anyone who can manage a media career has to be smart. Her ambition to become an actress was fulfilled. Jade herself was the role she played, and the world of media and celebrity was her stage. Jade was open and true to herself even with things that were hard to swallow. Jade was Jade and made no excuses: impetuous, loud, but equally warm, loving and generous of spirit.

"To seek to do everything it takes to provide for your children after passing is one of the noblest things you can do."

He was referring to the slew of money-raising magazine and book deals, engineered on Jade's behalf by Max Clifford, in the months after her diagnosis with cervical cancer.

As Mr Clifford pointed out, the dignity with which she publicly faced her cancer won her many new friends, as well as doing "more than any politician or doctor could have dreamed of" to save lives by highlighting the disease.

"She was an ordinary person, but an extraordinary one," he said.

"The princess of Bermondsey and the queen of Essex."

Not only had she taken care of her own in the form of women everywhere who might benefit from the greater profile she now lent to cervical screening, she had also ensured a bright future for her boys.

And so there was no need to rehearse some of the less savoury aspects of her life: no need to talk about her ill-tempered outbursts or the whiff of bigotry that surrounded her only last year.

She had already absolved herself and sown the seeds of something better, saying: "I know I am ignorant but I'm going to make sure that my boys are not. I will make sure they have the best education."

Among those who came to honour that absolution was Emma Barnard, who at 27 is the same age as Jade when she died and who lives in nearby Walthamstow.

She stood in the crowd, clutching a cellophane-wrapped bunch of flowers.

"My mum had cancer last year and was treated at the same hospital," she said.

"Jade was friendly, bubbly. She was a real person, just like us. The money didn't change her. She was just who she was."

And for the thousands who turned out, that was "why" enough.

- INDEPENDENT