NEWSJade Goody Tributes Pour In
March 23 2009, Published 3:49 p.m. ET
Celebrities, fans, politicians and friends are paying tribute to Jade Goody today.
The brave reality TV star lost her fight with cancer yesterday and tributes have since flooded in from all over the world – with mourners already gathering at her house in Essex, England to leave flowers.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the messages of condolence, saying: “She was a courageous woman both in life and death and the whole country have admired her determination to provide a bright future for her children. She will be remembered fondly by all who knew her.”
Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, who shared the Big Brother house with Jade, said she was “deeply saddened” by her death, adding: “I am glad Jade is out of pain and that she died peacefully with her family around her.”
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Model and presenter Danielle Lloyd, who also shared the house with Jade, said: “I have been praying for a miracle these past few weeks and now she has been tragically taken away from us. I know that her boys will grow up to be great men and do their mum proud.”
Journalist Carole Malone, also a contestant, wrote: “Jade Goody showed the world that just because someone has a disastrous start in life, just because they grow up with no money and no hope - don’t dare write them off.”
Big Brother producer Phil Edgar-Jones said Goody “touched a lot of people because she was very real."
Jade's husband Jack Tweed and her mother Jackiey Budden were by her side when she died in the early hours of Mother's Day. She was 27 years old.
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On Twitter actor Stephen Fry called her “a kind of Princess D from the wrong side of the tracks."
Prince Azim, the son of the Sultan of Brunei, had struck up an unexpected friendship with Jade and said: “Jade was a warm and lovely lady. My condolences to Jack and her family.”
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Jade's battle with cancer is thought to have saved thousands of lives as the number in smear tests dramatically rose when she went public with the disease.
The Rev. Jonathan Blake, who officiated at Jade and Jack’s wedding, called the bride “a saint from Upshire and a princess from Bermondsey” who had “laughed in the face of death and given us a completely different approach to the way we deal with cancer."
Mourners arrived at Jade’s house within minutes of the news of her death breaking, leaving floral tributes at the gates of her home.
Marjorie Loftus, 78, from Barnet, north London, left a card which read: “You may not have known where East Anglia was but you knew the way to our hearts.”
She said: “It seems to me that Jade Goody has saved hundreds of lives because of the publicity her cancer has had, who would have thought that?”
