Goodbye

At the risk of going against public opinion, I just don't get the Jade Goody thing. I cannot understand why so many people were at her funeral, why so many people were so upset, why so many felt they had lost a close relative.

She was an enormous character, that is true. As much becasue she manage to understand how to use the fact that people laughed at her. She was the 21st century version of a clown. From the moment she was spotted on Big Brother she had utilised the attention. No-one has been more famous for not being famous. Or more famous for saying the most ridiculous things. And I don't begrudge her that. She came from a very poor background. It was good that she managed to find some pleasure, even if it was often at her own expense.

What she was able to do was to manipulate the Eastenders culture. She turned her life into a story, and people wanted to see more becuase it made them feel big, made them feel that at least they were better, more intelligent, than Jade.

But the modern world seems to have lost a sense of proportion. We saw it when Princess Di died. And we have seen it since, in things like the Maddy case. We have moved to a mass emotion, where the vox populi sheds its tears as one, where if one person bleeds then we all do. And it is strange. Where most of the time we won't even talk to our neighbour we are able to feel utterly distraught and bereft over someone we don't know. Maybe, dare I say, we would be better learning how to be ourselves and to help each other, than to rely on an event to bring us together and make us feel worthwhile.