Goody's gone, but where does it leave the rest of us?

AS the Jade Goody circus staggers out of town, its star turn is still clinging on to the final curtain, even from beyond the grave.
Goody’s very public death was a horrible thing to behold for a variety of reasons; none more so than the way the mawkish, voyeuristic public so enthusiastically lapped it up.
Newspapers, television, internet sites, pub discussions have been dominated by Goody in recent weeks. The Prime Minister’s been talking about it. Michael Jackson phoned the hospital.
Yet whatever the whole miserable shebang said about its protagonist, what it revealed about the British public was considerably worse.
Since the death of Princess Diana 12 years ago, Britain has turned into a nation of professional mourners.
We love wrapping ourselves in the cloak of someone else’s misery. No longer is anyone allowed to die privately, it seems.
And the age of digital media interaction has given us the perfect way of doing so.
No death can pass these days without memorial websites springing up, filled with illegible trash written by people who should spend less time “grieving” and more time learning to spell.
Phone and text-ins are jammed with those so emotionally bereft they feel pouring out crocodile tears for someone they don’t even know will somehow make them be a better person.
The mother of a lad who was killed recently in Nottingham was on Facebook within minutes, updating her status. To what? Fairly miserable? A little peeved?
I have received emails and text messages from people who should know better canonising Goody as a saint just because she did her best to look after her children by striking huge financial deals to sell her death to the highest bidder.
I’ve no problem with that if that’s what she wanted to do, but as a mother a natural desire to protect your children should be a given, not something that awards you hero status. And when you’re dying and someone comes along waving cheques worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, it’s not a hard decision to make.
Cancer campaigners say Goody has helped those women who might otherwise not have bothered to have smear tests, or those who, like Goody herself, stupidly ignored results which showed abnormalities (had she had acted, she might even have been alive today) to come forward.
How damning is that? What does it say about people that it takes a semi-literate reality television star to tell them they should have regular smear tests or ought to see a doctor if there’s a chance they might have cancer? Are people really that stupid?
I have no issue with Goody. She got lucky and made a mint. Then her luck ran out. I feel sorry for her because she’s a young mother who died and her children will grow up without a mum.
But I won’t mourn her because I didn’t know her and she played no part in my life.
My fear is that I might just be alone.