Mar 22 2009
Jade Goody dies at the age of 27
British reality star Jade Goody died in her sleep early Sunday morning at 3:55 after a seven month fight with cervical cancer in her home in Essex, southeast England. In the UK this was Mothers Day.
The following statements was told to reporters by her publicist, Max Clifford:
“She had been asleep the past 24 hours and it happened very peacefully. Everyone is, of course, devastated, but we knew this was coming. I’m just glad people are remembering her as a brave girl who took on this battle with courage and gusto. She’s inspired a lot of people.”
Just a month ago she married her boyfriend, Jack Tweed at a countryside hotel outside of London. The ceremony was televised and pictures sold to the media for money to go to her boys after her passing.
Goody shot to fame in 2002 after appearing in Big Brother, a reality show in which people are locked in a house and their every move televised. After this Goody went on to become a regular in gossip magazines and launched her own perfume, but her popularity sank in 2007 after racially charged tirades against Indian housemate Shilpa Shetty in Celebrity Big Brother.
It was during an appearance on a Indian version of Big Brother in August of last year that she learned she had cervical cancer. She dropped out of the show to return to Britian for treatment and later learned the cancer was terminal.
Goody’s decision to die in the public gaze, in order to earn as much money as possible for her two sons, has seen her popularity broadly restored.
Before her passing, Goody was also baptized in the hospital with her sons Bobby, 5, and Freddy, 4.
Funeral services for Goody will take place in Upshire, Essex at the churchyard of St. John the Baptist, in Buckhurts Hill.
“It will be a celebration of her life… a final farewell,” Clifford told reporters. “Jade’s planned everything. It’s exactly the way she wants it and completely in her style.”
