Mal Fletcher comments

By imbibing celebrity news and reality programming ad infinitum, some people seem to become mindless drones who would rather watch the unfolding minutia of other people's lives - real or imaginary - than live out their own great adventure and achieve something truly notable.

It's time we showed our young people in particular that achieving something noteworthy is a very different prospect than merely achieving notoriety - and far more important.

The generational aspect of this is very important. What one generation tolerates, the next generation often treats as the norm.

Perhaps we will soon see, in the ultimate expression of 'showbiz parents', people having children with the prime intention of making them celebrities from birth - and making money from their fame.

Fly-on-the-wall celebrity may literally become a cradle-to-grave proposition and The Truman Show may prove prophetic.

In a sense, celebrity is the ultimate expression of branding - instead of prominent people endorsing a product, people become the product. Among its consumers, celebrity tends to distort a sense of virtue and value. Mark Twain once remarked that many a small thing has been made large by the power of advertising.

Like all products, celebrities are at the whim of the consuming public. When they cease to meet a perceived need, or merely scratch an itch, they're often discarded like yesterday's newspapers.

Already, there are claims that movie companies want to turn Ms Goody's story into big-screen drama, while certain publishers want to republish older books about her as if they were new releases, by adding a few lines about her death.

We can only hope that in the long-term Jade Goody's short life will somehow count for more than that. We can hope that her life will be measured in more than just the column inches she filled in tabloids - not only by those who knew her personally, but by the wider community.