How Jade Goody became the new Princess Diana

Jade Goody and Princess Diana had much in common, not least the psychological roots of their stratospheric popularity. Like Jade, Diana was portrayed as a victim of the press, right up to the ravening presence of the paparazzi at her moment of death. Like Jade, Diana portrayed herself as a victim, in Diana's case of the royal family.

The story line is archetypal: the heroine sins, repents by claiming she was a victim of her circumstances, and attains love through her suffering. It is the universal story of the innocent woman who has been tainted by external forces and redeems herself through sacrifice - ultimately through death. She is the willing scapegoat, or in Goody's words, "escape goat", who sacrifices herself to purify the sins of others and to maintain the established order. This is the masochist's revenge against a world that has caused her harm.

A childhood of seeing people argue and swear turned Jade into an ‘escape goat’

This is something that that master of popular psychology, Max Clifford, has acutely realised. Under his tutelage, Jade managed to transform herself from a figure of scandal and ridicule to an icon of heroic suffering.

Clifford told us how Jade came to him for help when her career was at rock bottom: "I knew her well enough to know that she was more sinned against than sinning."

It's a remark that perhaps summed up Jade Goody's appeal to the public more than anything else - being sinned against has been her greatest trump card. And her unsuccessful battle against cancer dramatically epitomised Goody's fight between the forces of good and evil.