Is it right to watch Jade die?

Even mentioning Jade Goody I could be walking into a minefield,

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Members of my profession hardly have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising the prolific appearances of the dying 27-year-old reality TV star – such is our apparent hunger for every cough and wince.

I may as well set some ground rules here and now by echoing all those who say that what is happening to that young woman and her family is nothing short of a tragedy.

But I find myself forced to take a long look at my peers in the national media who insist on reporting every stage of Jade's sad decline.

I have to wonder, and I hope you will help me to answer this, whether it is the editors of the red-top papers and the glossy mags who think we want to see her dying step-by-step or whether it is indeed the general public who hunger for this information.

Or is it Miss Goody herself who is clinging to the one part of her life that has remained constant since her awful diagnosis – the attention?

There have of course been well-documented declines in the past. The late, great Roy Castle gave a poignant interview in his final months when, dying of lung cancer, he said his finest hour would be his last, when he looked back at all that he had done and felt satisfied.

But Jade's has taken on a whole new, and I'm afraid to say disturbing, level. Every day there is a picture of her, doubled up with pain and clearly in distress. Those of us with any sympathy for her surely cannot want to see this, can we?

Is there then something sick about us that we need to watch this woman suffering?

Do we get some form of perverted satisfaction out of seeing her in pain? We all laughed at her on Big Brother when she asked if "East Angular" was abroad. And we all shook our fists as she bullied the Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty.

More hypocritical still in my completely unqualified opinion is the tabloid papers calling for our messages of support on their websites – the same tabloids that relished her downfall after Shilpa-gate.

We can't call Jade a victim of the media though. Without it she'd be just another ignorant young woman, branded a chav and dying without securing hundreds of thousands of pounds for her boys thanks to a magazine deal.

Thanks to her exposure she has published books, filmed TV series and released a perfume. The media has invested a lot in the Jade Goody product. But does that really entitle us to watch her die? And do you really want to?