KEY POINTS:
Jade Goody. You may remember her. She is the woman who has made a multi-million-pound living since appearing on Big Brother in 2002, and nearly lost it all again in January when she was accused of racially abusing the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty while back in the Big
Brother house.
At the height of the furore, the Indian tourism office came up with a delightful wheeze. They paid tens of thousands of pounds to take full-page advertisements in British newspapers with a direct address to the one-time dental nurse from east London.
The copy extolled the considerable virtues of India. With great magnanimity they invited Ms Goody to see the magnificence of the country for herself and experience its "healing nature" and to "cleanse your stresses away".
So she took up the offer to visit. The only problem? It had never been anticipated that she would. Her move left the Indian government less than delighted, and it made it clear that, while she would be welcome as a tourist, she was no official guest.
And so last week she arrived in India for a four-day private visit, determined, she said, to learn about the place and its people. She repeated her apologies to Ms Shetty. She said she never understood what to be underprivileged truly meant. And she donated £50,000 ($141,700) to two children's charities, her management company said.
But if the aim was to entice Indian opinion, the charm offensive was in trouble from the off.
On day one, she popped out of the five-star Le Meridien hotel where she was staying to visit some Delhi slums and see the work of a charity with street children.
But residents at one charity home were unimpressed. They angrily surrounded her car, shouting "Hai! Hai!" - Hindi for "Down with you!" Ms Goody misunderstood, waved and called back: "Hi!"
So the residents spelled it out. "We don't want her here," they told the Times of India. "It's not enough to get her picture taken with a few children and think that's atonement for her deeds. She has insulted our nation."
Nor was Ms Shetty playing along. Ms Goody told reporters she had been invited to visit Ms Shetty and her family in Mumbai, though charity commitments meant she was unable to do so. Ms Shetty promptly announced Ms Goody wouldn't be welcome.
Ms Shetty's PR explained: "Shilpa is not interested in being used as a PR tool by Jade Goody. Jade's purpose in visiting India is clear, because she has come with her agent."
Then, staff at Le Meridien let slip the hotel phone lines had been jammed with hate calls for Ms Goody.
Most, apparently, were from a Sri Lankan living in London calling herself Prasantika, who was beside herself with rage that Ms Goody had been allowed into India at all, and demanded that the hotel throw her out.
Then the press was told she had refused to eat local food because she was afraid of "Delhi belly". The newspaper breaking the story quoted its unnamed source as saying, "When you're trying to make amends for being racist about Indians, turning down the food isn't exactly a good start."
The newspaper was Britain's Daily Star, and that said it all: Ms Goody's visit to India was of far more interest to her fellow countrymen and women than it was to Indians. Her itinerary was greeted with boredom. One senior figure in the Indian press said yesterday: "She may be big in Britain but Jade Goody is nobody here."
India has no need of minor British celebrities to sell papers. It has Bollywood for that - and this is one of very few countries in the English-speaking world where sales are rising.
Ms Goody's advisers, though, were happy enough. Catherine Lister, of John Noel Management, said: "We have had letters from both children's charities to say how fantastic Jade was with the kids there, and how grateful they were for the donations."
- INDEPENDENT
