The News Is That There Is No News

With the death of Michael Jackson yesterday, all news appears to have stopped.

Judging by the coverage on this morning’s TV, he must have been as famous as Jade Goody!

In an interview, someone, presumably famous, described Jackson as “A great singer.”
Says who? If he was that great, how comes I can’t buy a recording of him singing ‘Nessun Dorma’!

Nuff said.

RIP Mikey.

Jade Goody-bye

I’ve seen everything now. Yesterday, the Sky News channel devoted at least seven hours covering the funeral of Jade Goody.

I’ve never had much time for publicist Max Clifford, but anybody that can engineer a stunt like that for a commoner, has got to be a hero!

Natasha Richardson, a true international celebrity with internationally famous grandparents, parents, siblings, husband, uncles, aunts and cousins, died four days before Jade and we never learned of her funeral until the day after it took place. Max obviously wasn’t on the case!

I dare say Sky’s coverage took up more air time than Princess Di’s or the Queen Mum’s did.

Thousands lined the route, throwing what was possibly the entire stock of flowers from New Covent Garden at the hearse.

I spotted one wreath on the hearse that dipped its O Level English, ‘Gran Daughter’ . There were floral tributes with Jade’s comical sayings such as ‘East Angula’ and ‘Minging’, I must have missed the one that said ‘Shilpa Poppadum’, and one depicting a jar of ‘Marmite’, because like the yeast extract, ‘you either liked her or hated her’.

With Jade gone, which non-celebrity are we going to like or hate now?

Goodbye Jade, rest in peace. It’s been fun writing about you.

These stories are getting a bit Jaded

No, no, no, no! Will nobody rid me of this accursed spectre?

As I was passing the news stand in our local ASDA supermarket yesterday, this headline on the front page, of all things, the ‘Daily Star’ caught my eye, ‘Hollywood Babe To Play Jade.’ Of course I had to stop and investigate further, furtively may I add, just in case any passer-by thought that I was actually going to buy the rag.

It transpires, if the story is to be believed, that Michelle Ryan is lined up to play Jade Goody in a film of her life.

Hold it there! Would that be the Michelle Ryan with the drop dead gorgeous looks and the svelte figure, the Michelle Ryan who played Zoë Slater in the BBC soap ‘EastEnders’, the one who played the ‘Bionic Woman’? It certainly would.
Well, there’s a brilliant piece of casting. That’s comparable to Brad Pitt portraying Lee Marvin!

Will we see scenes of Jade doing heroic deeds on a par with parachuting into Arnhem or storming the beaches of Anzio?

No!

According to the ‘Star’ it will follow her through her years as a dental nurse and applying for ‘Big Brother’ and, I quote, “It will have the saddest of endings, with her bittersweet wedding to Jack Tweed and her christening alongside sons Bobby, five, and Freddy, four.”

Personally, I think this story is just a bit of sensationalism, just there to keep the Jade machine rolling.

Are they never going to let the poor girl rest in peace?

The Jade Effect

I’ve been hoping that this story would go away so that I didn’t have to comment on it, but it is now snowballing so out of control, I’m going to shove my oar in.

Now, I’m as sorry as the next man that Jade Goody’s life has been snuffed out at such a tender age with the dreadful cancer, but aren’t people in general and the media in particular making a mountain out of a mole hill?

From here on I’m probably going to be demonised and vilified by, who I shall kindly call, the intellectually challenged!

I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, which I’m not, I am telling it like it is, the truth.

All the time Jade was fit and well, she was the media’s favourite object of ridicule, since her illness was announced, sycophancy has crept in.
Let’s get it straight, Jade was a talent less nobody. She was just one of those people that are famous for being famous.

‘Jade has raised awareness for the need for screening’ shout the headlines. Jade didn’t raise awareness. Campaigning, handing in multi signature petitions at Number Ten or perhaps even a ride on a unicycle from Lands End to John O’Groats promoting your cause, that‘s raising awareness, selling the rights of your wedding to a celebrity magazine, isn’t. As far as I’m aware, Jade didn’t even go on TV and mention the need for screening.

I dare say that when Princess Di got killed in a car crash, more people started wearing seat belts in the back seats of cars. Di never advocated ‘clunk click’ in her lifetime.

The event caused the awareness, not the person.

Gordon Brown talked of his ‘sadness’, did he truthfully know who Jade was? Some clown on the Internet has even suggested that ‘Mothers Day’ be re-named ‘Jade Goody Memorial Sunday’. All of a sudden, it’s cool to love Jade.

Unfortunately folks, when all this fawning has finished, in years to come, all poor Jade will be remembered for is being, at best a loud mouthed bigot, or at worst, a loud mouth racist..

Who's the Sickest?

Ex-dental nurse and reality show participant, Jade Goody, has had the latest issue of ‘OK!’ magazine devoted to her dying with terminal cancer.

‘Ah, that’s nice!’, I hear you say. Not really, the poor girl is still alive.

On the front cover of the rag, directly beneath the title are the words, ‘In Loving Memory’.

This was not published in error as Mark Twain’s well documented obituary in the ‘New York Journal’, on which he commented “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, in my mind, this is a blatant money making venture on behalf of the publishers of ‘OK!’ magazine.

What I find equally bizarre, is the fact that Ms Goody’s family have said that this ‘tribute’ is “very kind”.

I know that if I was the poor girl, I wouldn’t be laying in bed reading my obit, I’d be hoping and praying that a man, in a white coat with a hypodermic in his hand, would come running into the room at the last minute shouting, ‘Hold on, I’ve got the cure, I’ve got the cure!”