Famous for being nothing more than herself, arguably Britain's most famous reality TV contestant, 27-year-old Jade Goody, is going to die. Soon. The Big Brother contestant, who prompted abuse and adoration in equal measure from the UK press and public, was told late last week that the cervical cancer she was diagnosed with last August has spread to her liver, bowel and groin. Doctors have told her she perhaps has eight weeks to live.

I was living in London when that fateful series of Big Brother came on air in one very hot summer. For weeks, the flatmates and I watched on, aghast, as a gobby dental assistant from South London took over the airwaves - and the tabloid press.

This reality star's life reads like the plot of a soap opera - except for Jade, her death sentence is all too real.

Jade Goody grew up in Bermondsey, London, the daughter of an absentee drug addicted father and a lesbian mother with a withered arm. She was mouthy boozer. She wasn't slim, or pretty. She was thick as a brick - and, unlike other celebs who claim their dimness is an act (take a bow, Paris Hilton!) - Jade freely admitted it.

Throughout the series, clanger after clanger came out of her rather large gob. She thought Cambridge was in London, and that Rio de Janeiro was the name of a football player. She thought the region of East Anglia was abroad, and wondered if the citizens of Portugal spoke ‘Portuganese.'

Jade came fourth in that show, but was the contestant that really found her celebrity footing after leaving the house. Her fame made her a millionaire, and every element of her life was documented in glossy photo shoots for various British magazines. She lost weight, she gained weight. She got a makeover. She had two sons, Bobby (now 5) and Freddie (now 4) in quick succession. She opened a beauty parlour, then sent it bust. She found herself a toyboy, later banged up for assault. And the magazines sold and sold.

Jade was widely thought to have shot her career in the foot after her involvement in racist taunts against Indian actress Shilpa Shetty in the Celebrity Big Brother house in 2007. But she was slowly bouncing back from that, too, when she travelled to India to appear on their version of Big Brother.

When I read reports that Jade had been pulled from the house to return to Britain after a diagnosis of cervical cancer (relayed to her in the show's dairy room), I must admit I thought it was a case of the girl crying wolf. After all, magazines always play up what little material they've got to work with to sell copies, don't they? Glamour model Jordan sold loads of mags on the back of her diagnosis of ‘cancer of the finger' a few years ago. I'm a bit ashamed to say I imagined Jade's scare would end up being an enlarged mole or some pre-cancerous cervical cells that she'd use to milk some sympathy - and pounds sterling - out of the British public.

And now the girl who got the famous Burberry check tattooed on her arse and trained for the London marathon by ‘eating curry, Chinese and drinking' will never see another series of Big Brother on TV at all. Before the English summer rolls around, she will be dead.

Jade's terminal diagnosis prompted the star and boyfriend Jack Tweedy to make hurried plans to wed, which apparently they will do this Sunday. She left hospital earlier in the week to find rings and a wedding dress, which Harrods owner Mohamed al Fayed donated to her once she'd found the frock of her dreams. Elton John has offered up his Windsor mansion as a location for the nuptials.

Getting publicity to the last, Goody has continued to film a reality TV show and give plenty of interviews, in a hope to make as much money as she can to secure her sons' future. She has mentioned that she became famous through the gaze of a TV camera, so she really has no problem with living out her last days being filmed - if it benefits her boys.

"I've lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I'll die in front of them,' she told a UK paper last weekend.

And I don't really know what to say, apart from good luck, Jade. You provided us with no end of entertainment in that sticky summer of 2002, and I'll miss reading about your latest exploits in OK! when I buy one to take on a plane trip.

I hope your wedding is everything you dreamed.

Twenty seven, and two months to live! So sad.

 

Lindsay gets very Skinny Minnie

Another girl who's grown up in the spotlight, Lindsay Lohan, is giving celeb watchers cause for concern (yes, more!) of late. The 22-year-old actress has lost a huge amount of weight in recent months, and sightings of her twiglet legs and sharp collarbone around New York City has raised some alarm in the blogs and mags. Lindsay is very, very thin - although Karl Lagerfeld probably thinks she looks awesome. Eating is so common, didn't you know?

For her part, the actress has denied an eating disorder or a relapse back into drug and/or alcohol addiction - despite her late night lifestyle hosting nightclub events while girlfriend Samantha Ronson DJs.

Lindsay's shrugged off the weight loss, saying it wasn't intentional and most likely resulted from ‘working too hard.'

Problem is, the girl's had hardly any work to speak of. So what's she been working so hard at, smoking? Fighting in the street with the missus?

A quick check of IMDB.com sees Lindsay has one movie coming out this year, Labour Pains, where she plays a woman who fakes a pregnancy to keep her job. Mamma Mia's Amanda Seyfriend, a year older than La Lohan, has five movies out in the same time period. Lindsay Lohan is a great actress, but nobody wants to work with her.

And I wouldn't blame them after seeing the latest photos of the girl. She's finally looking older than 14-year-old sister Ali, who could pass for a 40-year-old - a very dubious distinction. Looking at the pics makes me want to sit her down and feed her some vegetables. Her skin looks like sandpaper. Her hair extensions are long, lacklustre, and look like they're made of that synthetic wiggy stuff worn by old waitresses in themed restaurants.

Actually her entire body looks like it's in dehydrated form, as though she'd plump up to the size of a normal woman if you tipped some water on her. Like what do you call them? Seamonkeys. She looks beaten, weathered, and shrivelled up, and if you look at a picture of her from just five years ago, when she had the showbiz world at her feet, it's really quite sad. And scary!

Girlfriend Samantha Ronson isn't looking much better, snapped lately walking around New York with skin the colour of the undead. As in love as these two claim to be (in between screaming disagreements and public brawls) they are definitely not good for one another physically.

Take care of yourself, Lindsay, before you start treading the ballet-flat path forged by Amy Winehouse.

A new form of reality TV classy

You know Ray J, right? Or you know of him. The R&B singer is the brother of fellow singer Brandy, made a rather dirty sex tape with former girlfriend Kim Kardashian, and dated a post-Bobby Whitney Houston.

Now Ray's got his own reality show, For the Love of Ray J, reported to be along the same lines as the horrendously excellent Flavor of Love. I know Bret Michaels' Rock of Love has its fans, but for me Flavour of Love has to be the ultimate in car crash reality TV. You simply cannot look away from the skanks fighting over a slightly insane rapper.

Ray's show, like Flav's, features girls competing for his favour. He's even given them classy nicknames, like Naturalle, Hot Cocoa, Chardonnay and Caviar.

But it's been none of these eloquently named, delicate flowers of womanhood that've got Ray into the gossip headlines. That glory would go to a contestant called Danger - so named because she sports a tiger tattoo. Down the side of her face.

Anyway, the National Enquirer is reporting that Danger and Ray have gone and made a Ray J Jr. during the filming of the reality show. That's right, he's got his reality show ho pregnant.

Says Danger (real name Monica Leon) to the paper: "There is no way the baby can be anyone's but Ray J's. I was locked in a mansion with him and 13 girls from October until the end of December. Toward the end of the first week of filming, we made love for the first time - and we slept together every night after that! I didn't want to fall for Ray J, but he was so charming it became impossible not to. I was in love with him, and as strange as it might sound, I think he loved me."

Yes, with 13 ladies of ill repute in the house, I'm sure he loved only you. Danger probably stays up at night waiting to be visited by Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and a bunch of rowdy leprechauns as well.

Good luck to you and your skank baby, lady! You're gonna need it.

Spotted

Isla Fisher in a super short dress celebrating the premiere of her movie Confessions of a Shopaholic in London...Paris and Nicky Hilton at the Alice + Olivia show at New York Fashion Week...Justin Timberlake showing his clothing line William Rast at the same event...Kanye West, Jared Leto and Chace Crawford in the front row at the Calvin Klein show...Ewan McGregor at a photo call for his new flick Angels and Demons in Rome...Lily Allen showing off her third nipple at a radio station party in the Bahamas...