Search results matching tag 'Jade Goody'

I thought Jeff Brazier and Jack Tweed were the same person

1704826 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:57:00 GMT

Reserved, as it is, for only the most serious media issues of the day, this blog can reveal that it was only today that I discovered that they aren't.

And what's more Virgin Media TV's Living channel has commissioned an hour-long pilot that follows one of them - not sure which - as he tries to rebuild his life and those of Jade's children. According to the accompanying PR guff, Jeff/Jack has 'done everything to shelter them from more stress or upheaval' following the very public death of their mother.

Which is presumably why he has agreed to put them on the tellybox in this.

Superdaddy, the name of the show, will then follow Jeff/Jack as he draws on all his vast knowledge of dealing with difficult emotions to help other families in conflict situations. It uses. we are told a dramatic 'lock in' where the family are forced to confront each other and 'battle out' their issues. The show culminates with feedback from the entire family, including the children.

Seriously responsible non-exploitative television or more rubbish from its multi-channel fringes? Perhaps only Jeff/Jack, or even Jade, knows the answer.

Susan Boyle goes loco

1704826 — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:08:00 GMT

I've worked for some unutterable articles (or as the prospective Tory candidate for Gloucester might say 'councillors') in my time and I've never had any desire to work for either Simon Cowell or Sir Alan Sugar.

It seems that the nation's sweetheart, the pie-faced foul-mouthed religious Scot Susan Boyle, has finally realised the same after apparently flipping out at, as the Daily Mirror describes it, 'her new-found stardom'.

According to the paper, ITV executives are so worried about her mental condition they are seeking medical advice for the Boyler to ensure she can cope with tomorrow's final of Britain's Got Talent.

If this is spin, then it's in appallingly bad taste but if it's true then it's even more worrying. What is it with the media industry that we need to find some ill-adjusted nutcase to put on a pedestal and then relish in their subsequent mental disintegration? I'm sure it's not what the blessed Jade would have wanted - if only she could find some way of speaking to us...

Have a good weekend.

Join Joanna Lumley and demand justice for the Gurkhas

1704826 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:53:00 GMT

To avoid accusations of predictability, I'm not going to rant about the search for someone to play Jade Goody in a stage show - it's beyond parody anyway - or that Father Ted's Mrs Doyle has had a shave after finding success on Britain's Got Talent.

I make no apology however for having another go at the Home Office. Why the hell, after months of deliberation, has this department betrayed retired Gurkhas by not allowing them residency? The Home Office has proved itself singularly ineffective in policing the borders or in evicting illegals or undesirables, but now refuses to allow brave men who have fought for us to stay.

It's appalling that more people - and more media outlets - haven't joined national treasure Joanna Lumley in demanding fair treatment for them. The only way I can see them getting justice any time soon is June next year when we can finally decide whether or not we want to keep this administration.

Jade Goody and the reality TV PR bandwagon of death

255762 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:12:00 GMT

Last year I said something pretty mean about Jade Goody and I'm sorry. I wrote she had PR cancer and then it turned out to be real. My bad, but even as she lies wasting away it appears the PR bit was right. I just read Shilpa Shetty is making a final dash to her bed side.

This is all kind of very sad and I know a lot of people have been moved by Jade Goody's plight.

Each day a new story appears about Goody's last days, but as we speed towards the end of this born and bred reality TV celebrity story it feels as if it is spinning out of control.

The lines between what is decent, dignified and acceptable and what is a PR money grabbing exercise are as blurred as 2am in an Essex nightclub.

I was listening to the Today programme this morning on R4. They had the story that Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, who you will remember was branded 'Shilpa Poppadom' by Jade Goody in 'Celebrity Big Brother', has flown to Britain to "bid farewell to the cancer-stricken reality television star".

Are there not real people that Jade Goody can see? People who give a frak rather than a minor Bollywood star?

We're told that the two have become "good friends" since the whole racist incident and Jade Goody went to India last year and appeared on the Indian version of 'Big Brother' where she was fatefully told she was ill.

Shetty said: "All I can do is pray. I’m not giving up hope of seeing her one last time. I always want to remember Jade smiling, the feisty strong gregarious Jade, a true trouper."

The arrival of Shetty on the scene came as OK! yesterday published its "tribute issue" to Jade Goody. I thought you had to be dead to get one of those so people could remember you in a dignified fashion.

Apparently not as OK! has a deal with Jade Goody's people (Max Clifford) to get first dibs ahead of rivals. Apparently they did really well out of the wedding issue with bumper sales. Imagine what they will get if they beat everyone to the death/tribute issue.

There will be acres of more coverage. It will be well read I am sure. Jade Goody is doing much of this to ensure that her two children are provided for. Surely they are now. It feels like the cameras should be turned off, but there appears no chance of that.

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In loving tribute to Northern & Shell's sense of taste

1704826 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:53:00 GMT

With the press deadline looming for its special tribute issue and Jade Goody still clinging on to life, we'll never know how tempting it was for someone from OK! magazine to attempt to smother her with a pillow. Perhaps this explains the mysterious appearance of a ranting stranger in her room a few weeks ago who was subsequently ejected by security staff?

Nonetheless, Northern & Shell, which has forked out to pay for coverage of her wedding to her jailbird husband pushed ahead with the publication of the ‘in loving tribute' issue including her final words even though Goody is still breathing.

The decision by N&S and Goody and her representatives to trade her death has always struck me as distasteful, although perhaps understandable as apparently there is a public appetite for this kind of journalism and Goody claims to want to secure the financial future of her children.

While they may be financially better off, we'll never know the mental impact of having their mother's life and death played out in the media will be to her children. Oh - unless of course OK! has signed up to track their lives too.

Jade Goody, cancer and marketing

1225254 — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:24:00 GMT

You might have thought that cancer and marketing make uneasy bedfellows. But like or not (and I don't) where there is cancer there is money to be made. The vast pharmas supplying ever more sophisticated chemotherapy drugs, need to make the case for their latest therapy to Healthcare Professionals and Health Managers, and to the public via sophisticated media campaigns - the Herceptin campaign (with its focus on breast cancer) being notably more successful than that for Avastin (focusing on bowel cancer). There is nothing new or even wrong in marketing like this, but it is very targeted, regulated and specialist, so people like you and me don't really notice. Believe me, the pharmas are extremely smart in how they present statistics and support certain causes.

But with Jade Goody, cancer has come into the marketing mainstream, The story has presented newspapers and media companies with the opportunity to boost circulation and viewing figures and thereby attract more advertising. There will also be a 'halo' effect with a spike in the sales of related goods and services, from increased screening to alternative therapies. More of the 'worried well' will be hot footing it down to their nearest BUPA hospital for a thorough MOT.

This is all fact, not conjecture. And however distasteful we may find the thought of profiteering from terminal disease, it happens. Those of you who complain about her behaviour but "just love reality TV" are now having to confront real reaIity on TV. Good. This is the animal you have created. I for one, enthusiastically support Jade Goody's desire to make her condition so public. Not so much for her wish to make money for her children in the only way she knows how, but because of the number of women who will now live because they've now gone for a smear test and been diagnosed early. Cancer is a truly terrifying disease, with the emotional stress often harder to deal with than the brutal treatment, and yet many forms are curable if caught early. Yes, I would do almost anything to get the message about early testing and successful outcome across. And I wish Jade Goody peace.

Stop press: more Goody news for politicians

1704826 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Further to my previous posts, it's been revealed that Justice Secretary Jack Straw has changed the rules regarding the curfew conditions of Jade Goody's charming fiance Jack Tweed, who has just served 18 months for assault, so that he can spend the night with his bride rather than return home, which is part of the terms of his bail.

Gordon Brown meanwhile has continued his 'People's Princess' lines by paying yet another tribute to Goody on a visit to Fife.

In other news, home reposessions have risen to 40,000, a further 3000 people have lost their jobs, Government borrowing is set to hit £90bn this year and two teenagers were stabbed to death in London last night.

Who is more cynical - the press, the politicians, or is it me?

Jade Goody: an addendum

1704826 — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Anyone else happen upon Gordon Brown's moving tribute to Goody in his weekly Q&A with journalists on TV?

Although it wasn't quite as opportunistic as Tony Blair's eulogy to Lady Di, it was either his 'She was the People's Princess' moment or an attempt by a journalist to make him look stupid.

If it was the former, then that surely goes to show just how far this country has gone in the wrong direction and if it was the latter, then the journalist probably succeeded.

Watching Jade Goody's final Living moments is not OK!

1704826 — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:09:00 GMT

Living TV has snapped up the rights to broadcast the wedding of terminally ill Jade Goody to her boyfriend for a reported £100,000, scheduled for mid-March, while OK! Magazine, it is claimed, has paid seven times that for the picture rights to the event and to the subsequent christening of her children.

Hmmm.

Dare I say it.... Goody has never in the least bit appealed to me; she is the ultimate fake media confection albeit incarnated in the flesh of a human being complete with feelings and sensitivities.

It was unfair on her the way that she was propelled to stardom by Channel 4 through, by no fault of her own, being revealed as crass, vulgar and ill-educated and although I'm sure her ignorance revealed some endearing traits - made all the more remarkable given her tough upbringing - the ugliness of her appearance in Celeb Big Brother revealed a side that was rather cruel and upon which the media were again quick to pounce.

The media didn't build her up and knock her down - they invented her for their own purposes as some sort of freak show, and followed her every move. Yet here was a girl who was too dim-witted to realise what was going on. To commissioning editors, perhaps her death is the perfect denouement to a soap opera that needed no set, no writers and no cast of supporting actors.

I won't be watching the wedding and I'm not at all interested in the pics but perhaps Goody, by seeking to secure a financial future for her family, has managed to get her own back on the media that has played her like a puppet by screwing them for so much cash. I only wish she had got more. Even she has realised that in the final analysis the joke isn't on her but on those that created her - perhaps when the inevitable happens those media organisations involved in creating ‘brand Jade' will sit back and look at the morality of the whole sorry episode.

Or will they be too busy scouring the estates looking for another naive simpleton to exploit for cheap titillation?