JADE Goody: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at Jade Goody’s post-reality career, with Michael Parkinson… It’s time for journalists to have a heated debate about a, er, journalist.
WITH Goody Friday over, it’s now time to celebrate Goody Saturday with Fiona Philips, who tells Mirror readers:
“If Jade Goody is paltry and wretched, Michael Parkinson is privileged and over-paid.”
She died for his sins of greed, having Billy Connolly on speed dial and being boring.
Look, I like Parky, but his ill-timed, insensitive remarks about Jade Goody just days after she’d been laid to rest really take the biscuit.
Sure the popadom. It’s takes the f****** popadom.
After remarking on her tough upbringing, he said that Jade represents “all that is paltry and wretched” in Britain today.
Every hack remarks on Jade’s tough upbringing - type in Jade on a Fleet Street PC and a paragraph about her one-armed mother, feckless dad and drugs pops up. Microsoft Word has a new plug in for bloggers to have the same.
That’s rich coming from someone who made a mint doing one programme a week for years. That represents all that’s very fortunate, privileged and over-paid about Michael Parkinson.
One problem with the Word For Windows plug-in is the risk of non-sequiturs, as Philips’ comment illustrates.
It’s a heated debate and Mirror writer Tony Parsons is keen to join in:
Michael Parkinson chooses to attack Jade Goody when she has not been in the grave for a week. How strange. How insensitive. How puerile.
Oh, the irony. Press F1:
“She was brought up in a cesspit of poverty,” writes Parkinson. “She was brought up on a sink estate, as a child came to know both drugs and crime, was barely educated.”
I am not quite sure how any of that is her fault, Parky. How can you help where you are born? How is it a child’s fault if the adults around her are off their faces with drugs? Surely that makes Jade’s rise to fame and fortune even more remarkable?
He now puts finger tip to keyboard:
It’s petty, spiteful and mean-spirited to sneer at Jade Goody when her grave is still so fresh.
Yeah, give it a month…
Parkinson’s attack is being portrayed as “brave” and, of course, there’ll be millions of chav-bashing snobsbravery and dignity, securing the future of her sons while raising the awareness of young women to cancer testing. who agree with him. Whatever anyone thought of her career in the withering spotlight of reality TV, I do not see how anyone can dispute that Jade died with
She did not catch cancer by choice, Tony…
I agree, it’s a crying shame Jade could not have done something worthwhile with her life. Like interviewing Billy Connolly.
Previously on the big debate:
The Mirror: “My lunch at Jade’s Grave”
Jade’s grave doubles as a picnic table. (Max Call me – I’ve ideas.) Jackiey Budden told onlookers [the snappers]: ”I’m just having lunch with Jade” as she spent an hour reading the Bible and eating crisps and Scotch eggs.
The official Jade Goody Scotch Egg, made in Scotchland.
Jackiey, 51, had walked a mile from Jade’s former home to the churchyard that overlooks rolling countryside in Upshire, Essex.
Any other details?
Wearing dark sunglasses, white linen trousers, a blouse and sandals…
Look out for Alex Curran’s “Get The Bunden Look For Less” in tomorrow’s Mirror.
An onlooker said: “Jackiey looked engrossed in the passages she was reading and at times read parts out loud.”
The Sun: “Bible gives sad mum strength”
HEARTBROKEN Jackiey Budden wrestles with her emotions as she reads the Bible at her daughter’s grave yesterday.
Jade Goody’s grieving mum seemed to draw strength from the holy text as she sat alone on the grass, occasionally reading passages aloud.
Private moments. With pictures.
The Sun: “Jack’s memory box for prison”
JACK Tweed is preparing a “memory box” of his time with tragic bride Jade Goody as he faces jail for attacking a cabbie.
What’s in the box, Jack? Jack of the box…
He is choosing his favourite wedding pictures, letters and pieces of Jade’s jewellery to help him cope with her death while he is behind bars…
And back copies of the Sun.
It emerged yesterday that sales of Paulo Nutini’s album These Streets have rocketed since two of the songs — Last Request and Jenny Don’t be Hasty — were played during Jade’s funeral service.
Daily Mirror: “Angry fans blast Parky”
Michael Parkinson? Sir Michael Parkinson on our Queen of Rough Diamonds…
Jade Goody fans have hit back at chat show legend Sir Michael Parkinson for his tirade against her. Parky, 74, said the reality TV star, who died of cancer last month, was “ignorant” and “puerile” - days after her funeral.
Writing online one fan said: “There’s absolutely no call for these remarks.” Jade’s publicist Max Clifford was “disappointed” by Parky’s comments..
Let’s have a heated debate:
Daily Mail: “A.N. WILSON: Parkinson is right, Jade represents a paltry and wretched Britain - but the real villain is reality TV”
Were all those countless people who lined the streets for Jade Goody’s funeral on Saturday wrong to do so?
Were the red-top papers and celebrity magazines who devoted thousands of pages to her dying days just as bad?
See the Daily Mail: ”Jackiey seeks comfort from the Bible as she sits alone at daughter Jade’s graveside
Sir Michael Parkinson, no stranger to the world of celebrity, has given his withering verdict on Jade’s story, stating that she represented ‘all that is paltry and wretched about Britain today’.
Now readers of the Mail may understandably be unaware of the extent of the deification of Jade.
‘Pretty dental nurse’ Jade’s promotional picture the first time she appeared in Big Brother
But in the past few days, downmarket papers have been full of special supplements devoted to her life and death. Sky News has been obsessively covering the Jade circus. Even the BBC led its bulletins with the news of her death.
Read all about not reading about Jade in the Daily Mail.
The story of Jade Goody does, indeed, speak volumes about the tawdriness of our media and the ugliness of our society. No one emerges well from the story, except perhaps those who were dragged into it through no fault of their own - the nurses and doctors who cared for her in the Royal Marsden Hospital.
These professionals are caring for the sick every day of their lives, in a dignified and unobtrusive fashion.
But there was nothing dignified or unobtrusive about Jade, nor about the media with whom she had such a rocky relationship - the media that turned her successively from TV ‘reality’ star to Big Brother ‘motormouth’ to racist slut and, finally, to the tragic Bermondsey Princess whose passing they mourned.
The Independent: Janet Street-Porter
Parky has said what many of us are thinking
Just as I thought we’d been granted a few days’ respite from the Jade Goody memorabilia industry, Sir Michael Parkinson dares to raise his head above the parapet and say what a huge number of people secretly think.
Shhh! We meet at dawn.
Writing in Radio Times, he says the dead reality-TV star represented “all that is paltry and wretched about Britain today… her death is sad… but it’s not the passing of a martyr or a saint, or God help us, Princess Di”.
Parky and I have had our differences, but on this occasion he’s triumphed. According to the odious Max Clifford (estimated fee for handling Jade’s public relations over the past few weeks, £200,000) Jade “saved” and “will save” countless lives of young women.
Parky and Me:
That is to forget the thousands of anonymous women all over the country who regularly donate to cancer research, who work in hospices and who toil selflessly as Macmillan nurses.
Jade can’t be allowed to hijack the whole business of cancer, and Parky has hit the nail on the head. Jade was “brave”, but then so is every single person who has to come to terms with this dreadful disease. Why buy a Jade Goody candle, by the way, when you can simply make a donation?
Posted: 11th, April 2009 | In: Celebrities Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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April 15th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Throwing stones in glass houses
Here’s a shocker - Parky didn’t like Jade. He’s been talking (ranting) at the Radio Times about ‘all that is paltry and wretched about Britain’. Meaning the fact that people are celebrating the life and mourning the loss of a ‘barely educated, ignorant and puerile’ woman.
I don’t know who he wants us to feel the angriest about - the wicked media who have created a ’smoke screen’ around her death, the ‘media chattel’ herself, or the British public who have seemingly elevated her passing to that of a martyr.
Personally, I feel the most contempt for Parky himself, for not having the grace or wisdom to recognise his own role in all this, or the irony of his comments. Think about it. Throughout his whole interminable career, this tedious suck-up has earned a fortune from the ‘media’ for conducting grovelling, obsequious interviews with celebrities. Throughout the seventies and eighties, Parkinson wheeled a never-ending cavalcade of celebrity before our eyes, pausing only to laugh at hopeless anecdotes until he almost slipped out of his leather chair in uncontrollable mirth.
He taught generations to worship at the altar of celebrity, and as the show wore on (and on and on), Parkinson became as big as many of the names he was interviewing - remember Robbie Williams’ giddy glee at achieving the stratospheric heights of a Parky interview? So he himself became a celebrity, for little more than a regional accent and a talent for tossing under-arm questions at people like Judi Dench.
In the end, he even turned his back on the BBC, ostensibly because he was tired of the format. Only to turn up presenting the exact same show on ITV, but for more money. Yes, if there’s anyone qualified to criticise a nation of celebrity worshippers, and condemn people for making money from a woeful lack of talent, it’s the king of both. I salute you Sir.
April 15th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
I know this is all so ‘last week’ but I thought I’d share a post from my blog http://p0pvulture.blogspot.com
Throwing stones in glass houses
Here’s a shocker - Parky didn’t like Jade. He’s been talking (ranting) at the Radio Times about ‘all that is paltry and wretched about Britain’. Meaning the fact that people are celebrating the life and mourning the loss of a ‘barely educated, ignorant and puerile’ woman.
I don’t know who he wants us to feel the angriest about - the wicked media who have created a ’smoke screen’ around her death, the ‘media chattel’ herself, or the British public who have seemingly elevated her passing to that of a martyr.
Personally, I feel the most contempt for Parky himself, for not having the grace or wisdom to recognise his own role in all this, or the irony of his comments. Think about it. Throughout his whole interminable career, this tedious suck-up has earned a fortune from the ‘media’ for conducting grovelling, obsequious interviews with celebrities. Throughout the seventies and eighties, Parkinson wheeled a never-ending cavalcade of celebrity before our eyes, pausing only to laugh at hopeless anecdotes until he almost slipped out of his leather chair in uncontrollable mirth.
He taught generations to worship at the altar of celebrity, and as the show wore on (and on and on), Parkinson became as big as many of the names he was interviewing - remember Robbie Williams’ giddy glee at achieving the stratospheric heights of a Parky interview? So he himself became a celebrity, for little more than a regional accent and a talent for tossing under-arm questions at people like Judi Dench.
In the end, he even turned his back on the BBC, ostensibly because he was tired of the format. Only to turn up presenting the exact same show on ITV, but for more money. Yes, if there’s anyone qualified to criticise a nation of celebrity worshippers, and condemn people for making money from a woeful lack of talent, it’s the king of both. I salute you Sir.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Steve… I agree….only a pickled egg would have the correct comic effect to represent Jackiey as epicural to me, in Jaded’s tasteful & tragic story.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Only two days to go before ‘She’ rises.
In Live and Let Die, the control signal was to tap a sword on the tombstone. Jackiey trying to exhume her early with the scrape of a scotch egg encrusted fork doesn’t quite have the same audience appeal for anyone scriptwriting Jade’s screen ‘epic’.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Could the journos who are now protecting the honour of the Jaded Goodies Story, by having a go…. at the manly, Mr. Parky, please respect the correct etiquette by writing their wordsmith_wanky words in caps ….if not for me and the rest of the Country….at least do it for common decency…..and in mournful memory of……
JADEd GOODYXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxgz
P.S. May I also suggest that these same soothesayers include the appropriate amount of sear words, spelling mistakes and death wishes in their pukey pieces.
Thanks in advance
Percy