Jade Goody: so brave in death.

She could not remedy her extreme lack of education or expunge the problems her own conditioned prejudices and England's snobbish class system caused her, but what she had - and that surely included her joy of living and one of the most beautiful smiles in the world - she displayed with innate skill.

She swapped from being a dental nurse to being a 'celebrity' on reality TV and in the pages of magazines and tabloids, and very sadly has been the first celebrity to have sought and been accorded the glare of publicity as she approached her death from cervical cancer. We saw her at her wedding, wigless and bald because of her illness, but radiant with happiness; we saw her and her two little boys christened as she wanted them to have Jesus to turn to. For her to die on Mother's Day seems somehow fitting. She loved them so much and did her best for them.

We are told that her funeral will be televised live.

Her last gift to the world is an awakened realisation of the need for cervical cancer screening. More young women will go for screening because of Jade's 'legacy', and more young lives will be saved, though so very sadly, hers could not be.

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk