Goody a stark picture of ourselves

Loud and brash, Jade Goody became a highly divisive star - initially mocked as an ignorant slob, then celebrated as a forthright everywoman by the tabloid press.

There will be no rewrite of Candle in the Wind for Goody's funeral, but in her own glottal, gobby way, she jabbed a knitting needle into the subconscious of Britain just as surely as Diana Spencer did, and revealed something dark about its people.

Why was a big-hearted, big-mouthed young woman who came fourth on a reality show back in 2002 seized on with such glee and turned into one of the most famous people in the country? We needed her, to salve our own soiled consciences.

We gleefully seized on her as "proof" that the people rotting on abandoned housing estates were not there because of the grim accident of birth, but because they were stupid, ugly and bigoted.

And all we proved - with unwitting irony - was our own stupidity, ugliness and bigotry.

She thought "East Angular" was a separate country, and wondered what currency they used in Liverpool.

Nobody wanted to stop and ask: why doesn't Goody know much?

Here's why. Her mother was a seriously disabled drug addict, so Goody didn't go to school often because she stayed at home to look after her.

From the age of five, she was in charge of doing the cooking, ironing and cleaning.

Her father treated her even worse. He stashed a gun under her cot, and her first memory was of him shooting heroin in her bedroom, his eyes rolling back and his body juddering.

Despite this, Goody always worked, in shops, for minimum wages, and stayed away from drugs (apart from weed).

And even when Goody was dying, we continued to jeer. about her decision to talk about it on TV so she could leave a pot of cash for her children was, apparently, evidence of her "vulgarity"

- INDEPENDENT