Jade: Trying to be positive

London, Sept. 13: Jade Goody, who flew back to Britain last month from Mumbai after cutting short her appearance on the Indian reality show Bigg Boss, had a major operation for cervical cancer at Royal Marsden Hospital in London yesterday.

Shilpa Shetty, Jade’s former nemesis-turned-well-wisher, said: “All my prayers are with her. It is a very Indian thing to forgive and forget. I am not just saying this because she was diagnosed with cancer. I have moved on.”

Max Clifford, Jade’s publicist who once represented Shilpa, confirmed: “The operation went well. She’s got the best people looking after her. I spoke to the surgeon and he said everything went according to plan. She’s had surgery, a radical hysterectomy and the operation lasted eight hours.”

Such operations normally take up to two hours. That it took eight indicates it was not straightforward though the good news for Jade is that the cancer appears not to have spread.

Although a controversial man himself because of the many “kiss-&-tell” stories he has sold to the tabloid press over the years, Clifford can also be kind.

“I spoke to her last night and she was as comfortable as possible and trying to be positive but was obviously feeling very scared as any 27-year-old in that situation would,” he said.

Before going into hospital, Jade expressed her fears in a magazine interview: “I’m terrified my cancer has spread and I’ll die in my thirties.”

The operation, at least, gets rid of suggestions from the cynical that Jade exaggerated the extent of the cancer fears in an attempt to win public sympathy and resurrect her shattered career in reality television.

Jade is now in intensive care at one of the world’s best-known cancer hospitals during which her uterus and ovaries were surgically removed. When she comes out, she will have to begin a nine-week course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, doctors told Clifford.

Life has not been the same for Jade since she clashed with Shilpa on Celebrity Big Brother early last year. She became a hate figure after her racist slanging matches with the Bollywood actress. Jade’s earnings disappeared when the perfume she had endorsed was taken off supermarket shelves and her publishers decided not to bring out a paperback edition of her “autobiography”.

Her relationship with her then boyfriend, Jack Tweed, who came across as an unpleasant yob when he appeared alongside Jade on Celebrity Big Brother, has now ended. He was recently jailed for 18 months after being convicted of assaulting a 16-year-old boy with a golf club.

During the trial, his lawyer asked for leniency for his client, arguing Tweed would be required to look after Jade’s two young children, Bobby, 5, and Freddie, 3, while their mother went into hospital.

But such was the viciousness of the attack he had mounted on his victim that the judge felt he had no option but to give Tweed a custodial sentence.

The children are being looked after by Jeff Brazier, their biological father whose relationship with Jade ended shortly after the children were born.

Offered a reported £100,000 to appear on Bigg Boss, Jade jumped at the chance though she knew she was being tested for cervical cancer. She was told she had the disease in a phone call from London after being summoned into the diary room.

Each year, 2,700 women in the UK are diagnosed with cervical cancer, which develops from cells lining the neck of the womb. Many deaths have been prevented because of the introduction of regular screenings by the National Health Service.

Shilpa has been magnanimous in victory. She told Eastern Eye weekly in London: “Meeting Jade on the show (Bigg Boss) was good.”

She knocked down suggestions that she had won a small part in the next James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace: “I don’t know how the hell these stories come out.”

There had been similar speculation about Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

In earlier interviews, Shilpa had appeared to confirm reports she was about to marry Raj Kundra, the London businessman who supports her various business ventures. The latest seems to be to set up a film production company, S2 Global Productions, in London.

But marriage is not imminent. “I have never set a one-and-a-half-year deadline for my marriage as reported. My plate is just too full to contemplate marriage.”

Kundra, who parted from his wife at about the time he met Shilpa, must be wondering what he has to do to persuade her to marry him.

Depending on the viewpoint, Shilpa is either stringing him along or giving him hope. “His home is London, so for that reason London will always be my second home, too. Depending on how life goes, if Raj and I end up together, I will be running the (film) company from a London base.”

Kundra will be wondering what she means by using that word “if”.