Funeral Of Jade Goody

JADE GOODY, in her final journey as extraordinary and memorable as the woman herself. From the 21-car funeral cortege, to the extravagant and humorous floral tributes, to the mass out-pouring of grief, Jade Goody's funeral was a send-off fit for royalty she deserved to get.

To the many thousands of fans who came to say goodbye, Jade was indeed the People’s Princess.
From the neighbourhood where she played as a child, to the suburbs where she grew into a woman and mother, a swell of affection and sadness swept through the streets.

In her final weeks, showing that familiar determination right to the end, Jade, 27, planned out her own funeral route — retracing her tragically short life.

Everyone kept remarking yesterday that Jade Goody was just an ordinary girl.

Yet with second-by-second coverage on TV, thousands of people lining the streets of London and Essex and flowers thrown Princess Diana-style on to her vintage Rolls-Royce hearse, there was nothing run-of-the-mill about her funeral.

If the reality TV star’s send-off seemed at times positively unreal, if in the eyes of some it occasionally skirted close to the absurd, the emotion from her public was genuine

They came in their thousands to say farewell. Ordinary people lining the streets as one of their own-an extraordinary girl- passed by.

Jade Goody's final journey to her grave yesterday was like her brief passage through life-a mixture of tears and laughter. Of deep sadness and emotion . . . and typical in your face Jadeness.

Hundreds of bunches and single blooms-daffodils, chrysanthemums and pink roses-were thrown onto the bonnet of her hearse along the 27-mile route of the cortege by roadside mourners in an echo of Princess Di's funeral-this time for the girl dubbed by Stephen Fry "A Princess Di from the wrong side of the tracks".