Jade Goody and the death of reality TV

Jade Goody was, undoubtedly, a cultural phenomenon of sorts. Something we certainly hadn't seen before, or are unlikely to see again. She was the epitome of the reality generation, in which anything that wasn't seen to be 'realer than real' was more often than not sidelined. She was our 'neighbour' of the 21st century: a dependable face; a slightly susceptible Brit would we could all identify with.

And let's not be deluded here: we all identified with her in some way. Even those who vilified her, invested some of their identity by the very fact that they hated her. She either represented the underdog we all aspired to be, or the very thing we that didn't. For a time, she mattered in some small way.

Her death was an obvious heartbreak to anyone in that first category. Even those that 'hated' her gave their compassion to her two children left behind, whose lives will undoubtebly be a focus of media attention for many years to come. No one likes to think of a mother dying so young, or a pair of innocent children being left behind in the world.

Yet Jade's death marks a very real representative death of reality TV also. The microwaved TV - conveinient packages of reality cooked up by fat execs - has now surely reached its zenith. Would it have been conceivable, way back during the innocent times of Big Brother One, that one of these so-called reality stars would have lived their whole lives in front of the cameras? It is the stuff of Orwellian dystopia or Truman Show satire. Yet suddenly, it's not a joke anymore; nor is it even satire. It is a very real reality, one which we should seriously begin to question.

When does reality TV begin, and a kind of peeping-tom perversion set in? It is analogous to the car-crash on the side of the road; the disaster we never really wanted to see in the first place, but couldn't help catching a glimpse of. Jade Goody's death may come to mark the beginning of the end of this car-crash perversion: a point in time we all began to realise, hopefully, that enough was enough.

Life can sometimes be 'realer' than real. It can throw up horrible surprises that none of us can possibly prepare for, or hope to manage ourselves. But let that be our own problem that we deal with introspectively, and not someone else's, that we feel compelled to do retrospectively. Our 21st Century neighbour deserves to rest in peace.