[Red Moon]

Jade Goody: 'Circus' surrounding her death is like 'eating a picnic at a public hanging'

Public fascination with the terminal illness of reality television star Jade Goody is "creepy voyeurism" that echoes the spectacle of "public hanging" according to a leading BBC journalist who has cancer.

The "public circus" surrounding the Big Brother star "is perilously close to becoming a form of entertainment", says James Landale, chief political correspondent for the BBC News Channel, who is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer of the lymph system.

Miss Goody, 27, is dying from cervical cancer that has spread to her liver, groin and bowel.

She has chosen to spend her last weeks in the limelight, selling the picture rights to her wedding to Jack Tweed, 21, to a magazine. She also plans to record a television interview with Piers Morgan for ITV.

In an article for the Daily Mail, Mr Landale, 40, said those following the coverage of Miss Goody's final weeks "with such seemingly prurient interest" should "examine their motives".

He wrote: "This is a powerful, compelling story of human tragedy – but how much are people drawn in also by the prospect of witnessing death? How much are people succumbing to exactly the same appetites as those who once took their picnics to attend a public hanging?

"Perhaps they are not quite modern-day tricoteuses sitting with their knitting before the guillotine, or day-trippers to the Coliseum watching the lions at work. Cancer rarely provides such a quick, violent death."

He also compared those following the story to motorway drivers who slow down to stare at scene of an accident.

He wrote: "I will not judge Jade herself. I cannot in all decency do so. She is facing death: I have merely glimpsed it across a crowded room. While she is counting the days, I have simply felt a brief shiver of mortality.

"Audiences down the ages have always been attracted by death. The fascination of Greek tragedy is not if death will come – we know that it will – but how and why. So let us at least be honest about such motivations.

"What we are seeing in these final stages of Jade Goody's life is little more than creepy voyeurism. Death was part of life. Now, it seems, it is perilously close to becoming a form of entertainment."

Miss Goody is due to be christened this month at a church close to her home, along with her sons.

Source: Daily Telegraph