After Jade’s cancer, what next? ‘I’m a tumour, get me out of here’?

Rod Liddle says that the stunningly tasteless announcement of Jade Goody’s cervical cancer on Indian Big Brother marks a new low. But that won’t stop TV bosses saying it is a public service

Here’s a notable first for television — a contestant on a Big Brother programme was told, in front of a television audience, that she had cancer. The woman in question was Jade Goody, whom you may vaguely remember as the coarse, thick, Bermondsey chav who sprung to national prominence for having been allegedly racist on a previous series of the programme. This time she’s on the Indian version of Big Brother called Bigg Boss — an attempt, apparently, to convince everyone that she isn’t racist at all, but is quite happy to trouser fairly large sums of money from darkies the world over. Anyway, she was invited into what’s known as the ‘diary room’ on the programme — a booth where contestants face a remote camera and say stuff like ‘it’s doin’ my ’ead in’ when they are unhappy or ‘I’m lovin’ it’ when they’re happy or ‘I’m livin’ the dream’ when they’re extremely pleased with themselves. So Ms Goody got called in and was promptly told she had cervical cancer. Apparently she cried. The show was aired this week, without apology. Big Brother is notorious for springing surprises on its contestants and many devotees of the show will consider this the best one yet. Cancer — beat that! They did it properly too, by using Jade’s own doctor to break the news to her, instead of just the faceless hosts of the programme. That gave the whole thing a lot of dignity, I felt. It could have been just cheap and exploitative, you know? So credit to the show’s producers.