Unsurprisingly, since Goody’s death, intellectual and popular comparisons between Jade Goody and Princess Diana are now being made, not least by Goody’s own mother who simply stated, ‘It’s like Diana, isn’t it?’ on seeing the flowers and tributes outside Jade’s former home, (http://www.metro.co.uk). Talking heads also made this comparison on 23rd March on Today, and Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. Goody really is not the people’s princess, of course, no more in death than in life, but one can chart a transformation in our culture from identifying with extraordinary stars to ordinary made popular celebrities, beginning with Diana who traversed both these types. The extraordinary levels of splitting going on around Goody are also significant here. It’s not so very long since she was being roundly demonised in the both the popular imagination and the popular press as a figure who embodied the very worst aspects of a society that has apparently lost all notions of respect – allegations of racism in the Celebrity Big Brother house led to myriad scenes of remorse and regret on Jade’s part, culminating in her decision to appear on India’s Big Boss as a means of doing public penance and demonstrating the emotional journey of the maturational processes that have seemingly marked out Jade’s ‘celebrity’ life. The irony of all of this, of course, is that this was also the very moment when Jade learnt of her illness and emerged into the torrid whirlwind that surrounded her terminal decline in recent months. It strikes me that in this period, the public responses to Goody’s decline have been steeped in references to the maternal. This has enabled not merely her restoration to the status of a ‘good enough’ celebrity but also surely fuels the extent of her sanctification following on from her death a few days ago. So what is at stake here?

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