How would the press treat Jade Goody if she appeared on our screens today?

The Channel 4 documentary series that marked 10 years since the reality TV star’s death prompted new questions about how celebrity status is created

I’m not sure whether Jade Goody, who died 10 years ago following a diagnosis of cervical cancer, was the first person in the country to be famous simply for being famous, but she was certainly a prime example of the phenomenon. And, indeed, she still is.

Writing about her at this distance, as I did when reviewing the first of three hour-long Channel 4 documentaries about her life, I concede that her significance is perfectly apparent, because her name is still so recognised today. She proves a certain point.

The most dispiriting aspect of the Goody story was what the media did to her, and I could not help but ponder if they might still do the same thing to her, or to someone like her, now. Headlines such as “Vote the pig out” would probably not run today, even in the remaining red-top newspapers. Then again, the early Big Brother shows were broadcast in a pre-social media age, and you cringe to imagine what Twitter would made of Goody’s early television appearances, had it been going in those days.

You’d hope that the extensive use of the word “chav” as term of class abuse, a subtle adaptation from a more pardonable shorthand for antisocial behaviour, would also be avoided. Yet we still do seem to live in a world where your accent and who you know can count for far more than they should, just as they did when Goody’s Bermondsey tones were heard for the first time.

More cheerfully, the newspapers would not be hacking her mobile phone this time round, post-Leveson, though the publication of “pap” shots of celebs staged or otherwise, is still pretty common currency on the web.

Much the most significant difference, though, is that no newspaper in 2019 would offer a Big Brother “star” £250,000 a year for a column; nor would a celebrity magazine pay her £80,000 for an “exclusive” interview. She would have been just as vilified, abused and, in turn, beatified by the press and public, but she would also have found herself in a vastly more crowded field of people who are famous just for being famous.

The 2019 Jade Goody would be less famous, and her earnings far lower. And no one would be making documentaries about her in a decade’s time.

Yours,

Sean O’Grady

Associate editor