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Jade was what a complete prude she was – she would go all red whenever I asked her about sex and revealed she was one of the last girls at her school to lose her virginity. Jade would never dream of flaunting her sexuality and she was always a one-man woman. All her boyfriends (of which there were only a few) had to woo Jade like a proper lady – because that’s what she was.

      She also had a brilliant singing voice – something I still can’t quite get my head around. The fact that she won Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes in 2006 somehow went under the showbiz radar – but for Jade it was one of her proudest achievements. ‘People in the audience were cheering and clapping, I couldn’t believe I’d won!’ Jade was also immensely chuffed when she created her perfumes – ‘Ssh’ and ‘Controversial’ – because it was something she’d genuinely put her heart and soul into. ‘Some people thought I’d had it all done for me. But I worked so hard getting it right,’ she told me at the time. ‘The most amazing thing was when I smelt people walking past me in the supermarket and they were wearing my perfume. The scent of Jade Goody. Who’d have thought it?!’

      Jade had so many obstacles in her life but she tackled everything head on, with courage and honesty. The day after her eviction from Celebrity Big Brother in 2007, she called me in tears (I was shopping at the time and couldn’t work out who was on the phone at first because she was so hysterical). Despite what many accused her of afterwards, Jade’s primary concern was, as always, her two boys. She was distraught about what might happen to them if she became a national hate figure. As was trademark Jade, she’d acted first and thought later, and immediately wanted to apologise for any offence she’d caused. It would have been far easier for her to hide away and hope the furore would die down, but Jade never did take the easy route.

      In her 27 short years Jade Goody experienced more ups and downs than a rollercoaster at Southend – yet no matter how low she was she always managed to see the funny side. It’s the memory of her beaming smile and that familiar ripple of infectious laughter that I, like most people, will remember forever.

      When this book concludes, at the end of 2008, she was still looking, as she always did, on the bright side. No one – not least Jade herself – could have imagined that the cancer would spread in such an aggressive way and that this young woman, who’d fought against the odds and won so many times before, would be robbed of her life at only 27 years old.

      ‘I’m fighting for my life,’ she told the Sun newspaper in August 2008. ‘I am going to fight the damn thing every step of the way because I have two beautiful boys who are my world. But I have to be realistic and face the possibility that I may not live to see them grow up.’ She was determined to shield Bobby and Freddy from the horrors of what she called ‘the C word’ – a resolution she maintained throughout most of her illness. ‘I can’t face telling my boys because they are so young’ she said, ‘They think mummy has tadpoles in her tummy.’

      A few weeks later, Jade underwent a gruelling eight-hour operation involving a radical hysterectomy to remove her womb, meaning the mother-of-two would be unable to have any more children. She was left in tears after doctors told her that her cancer had spread to the sac around her abdominal organs. But in typical Jade style she resolutely told reporters: ‘My odds of surviving are 50/50…but I’m clinging on by my fingernails!’

      As if Jade hadn’t been dealt enough of a blow, in September 2008 her 21-year-old boyfriend Jack Tweed was sentenced to 18 months in prison for attacking a teenager with a golf club back in December 2006. Jade told a friend: ‘This couldn’t have come at a worse time. I’m in bits. I’m devastated. Jack is my rock.’

      No matter what Jade was going through, her utmost priority remained to shelter her beloved sons from the harshness of the real world. She told them Jack had gone to Africa with Tarzan ‘saving the lions and tigers’. And as always, she even managed to find some amusement in her visits to see Jack in prison. ‘The funniest thing is that everyone in there either knows me or my mother personally!’ she laughed in a magazine interview. ‘He said to me, “Thank God the top dog in here used to go to school with you”. And he told me the man dishing up the food was a friend of my dad’s!’

      In October 2008, painfully aware that she was going to lose her hair to chemotherapy, Jade bit the bullet and chopped off her long locks. ‘I’m preparing myself for the day it falls out,’ she shrugged bravely. ‘But I’m not going to wear a wig. I’m going to look like an egg head soon – and if everyone knows I’m bald, what’s the point?’ In a magazine photoshoot showing off her ‘new look’ she joked, ‘I look like Henry the hedgehog’.

      Three weeks into her first six-week bout of treatment, Jade was clearly suffering – but she still did her damndest to look on the bright side. A text sent to me on 21st October was written with characteristic humour:

      ‘Thanks for your text, not been that well, it is all catching up on me. On my third week now and I feel shit, on top of all the treatment I am going through my change – fifty year olds go through this. I cant sleep, waking up soking [sic] wet. I am a mess. Being put on HRT tablet til I am 50 ha ha got to laugh, hope you are ok xx’

      Despite being separated from Jack, Jade insisted she was standing by her man, but joked that her only complaint was his fading tan. ‘Jack looks a bit pasty!’ she remarked when asked about him in an interview. ‘He likes using sun beds and there aren’t any in prison.’ Jade then made a permanent declaration of her love by tattooing his name on her wrist.

      As December drew close Jade was determined to ensure her two young sons remembered what could be their last Christmas together. Beaming from ear to ear, she took five-year-old Bobby and four-year-old Freddy to Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland for ice-skating, fair rides and a trip to meet Father Christmas. As onlookers gawped, Jade laughed, joked and pulled funny faces to amuse her sons, hiding any sign of the trauma going on in her life. ‘I appreciate everything I have so much more now,’ she said afterwards. ‘I need to live’.

      It was only during an emotional TV interview on This Morning that it became clear just how unprepared Jade was for what lay ahead. Jade told presenter Philip Schofield that she preferred to stay in the dark about the exact details of her illness. ‘I haven’t done any research or anything and I don’t want to know,’ she said. ‘I only know what I need to know, which is “this is my medication and this is that, this is when I get better”. I don’t want to know the ins and outs because it’s too much for my brain to take it in. It really is.’ She also confessed that as always, she was finding it hard to ask for help. ‘I have always been the person who is the “looker afterer” so to ask people to help me is very difficult,’ she told TV viewers. And when asked about Jack, she replied: ‘He’s my rock. I just want a cuddle.’

      Loyal Jade was also intent on trying to honour her agreement to appear in pantomine in Lincoln. But despite dutifully attending rehearsals as the Wicked Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Jade wasn’t able to appear on stage after all. Unable to shake off a flu virus, she spent part of New Year’s Eve in hospital. ‘I was only in hospital for a few hours,’ she valiantly insisted afterwards. ‘I felt well enough to see in the New Year with my sons and my friend Kevin Adams and his family. We had food, had a singsong, then watched Elton John’s gig on TV.’

      But by the start of 2009, Jade was forced to face the harsh reality of her illness. In a heart-wrenching interview she told the Daily Mirror how she screamed when she noticed her hair had begun to fall out – and that in three days it was virtually gone. ‘I stood there screaming until my mum came running. When she saw the hair on the floor, she gave me a cuddle and started rubbing my head the way she did when I was a baby. All of a sudden handfuls more hair was peeling off in her hands. I was wailing and screaming. It was awful.’

      And although she tried desperately to hide the hair loss from Bobby and Freddy, one morning she rushed downstairs without her headscarf and they saw her bald head. ‘When Bobby saw me he said “What’s happened Mum?” He looked so worried and started crying. It was devastating but I waited until he wasn’t around and then I broke down myself.’

      As usual, Jade’s

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