Jade

For anyone who doesn't know, Jade Goody was booted out of the Big Brother house last Friday. It was heartening. 82% of viewers who dialled in voted to eject Jade. She left the house to an eerie silence. Over the weekend, the UK press have pilloried and derided her as if she were Saddam Hussen's sister or something. Her perfume brand "Shhh!" has been removed from some shop shelves.

The thing about Jade is that she is clearly intellectually challenged. The other day she was asking big brother about Eskimos. She was wondering why their eyes don't freeze up and if there were any Eskimos living in London, she'd like to see one - rather like you might like to spot some endangered bird - an osprey or a red kite perhaps. She is so thick. Because of that, it is not really surprising that she says dumb things like "Shilpa Poppadom" or makes angry retorts at people who are dissimilar to her. In spite of myself, I do feel a little sorry for Jade. Channel 4 are partly to blame for her fall from grace and the private torment she must now be enduring in her Goody world. Their editing and choices about what to screen have probably deliberately shown Jade in a worse light than might have been.

So many things have emerged from this matter. Politicians, including Alan Johnson the Education Secretary have called for our nation's schools to do more to promote respect. They don't want our young people to turn out like Jade or to put her on a pedestal. Even Tony Blair was talking today about what living in a community was like when he was a boy - there just "wasn't the same kind of anti-social behaviour back then". I think politicians could do more to engender respect themselves by sticking to the jobs we elect them to do and not taking on lucrative directorships in business, not swanning off on fact-finding missions abroad, not staying in Bee Gee mansions on their holidays, not coupling with their secretaries, not making a mint from selling their memoirs, not forgetting their youthful ideals, not telling lies.

I don't like Jade Goody. I don't like her ugly fat inability to think or communicate properly. I don't like the shallowness she represents where even dumb people can get rich and famous without possessing an ounce of talent. I don't like her horrible mother or her useless boyfriend but at the end of the day, she was not the inventor of the idiocy - she just went with the flow of it all. Channel 4 made her and perhaps they have broken her too. It will be interesting to see how she fares in the months ahead. Of course that reported £8 million she has "earned" will help to ease any pain I'm sure.