British reality TV star Jade Goody married her fiance Sunday, the latest installment in her very public fight with terminal cancer which has enchanted and unnerved Britons in near equal measure. Jade Goody, 27, who found fame after appearing in the show "Big Brother" in 2002, wed fiance Jack Tweed in a lavish ceremony and reception at a country house hotel north of London, her publicist Max Clifford confirmed.Their big day -- media rights were sold for a reported one million pounds (1.1 million euros, 1.4 million dollars) -- was organised in the nine days since Tweed proposed in hospital after her terminal diagnosis. It was a "happy ceremony with lots of tears, lots of smiles, lots of laughter ... (a) very beautiful, very moving service," Clifford said. He added that the bride had taken painkillers to get her through the day.
Jade Goody has defended her decision to live out in the public eye what will likely be her last weeks, saying the money she earned would help provide for her two young sons, aged five and four. "I've lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I'll die in front of them," the star, who has lost her hair after chemotherapy for cervical cancer, told last week's News of the World newspaper. "I know some people don't like what I'm doing but at this point I really don't care what other people think. Now, it's about what I want."
Goody's approach has prompted an agonised debate in Britain about the rights and wrongs of such a public death. Some commentators admire her fortitude and determination to protect her children. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, told Sky News television: "A lot of people say: 'Well, it's better if she did everything in quiet. But I think she's made a decision that she wants the last months of her life to teach people something."
Others, though, see something ghoulish in the volume of newsprint devoted to her in recent days. "There are precedents for the place that Jade Goody occupies in modern British life -- people once used to queue at fairgrounds to watch human freaks," the Guardian newspaper said in an editorial Tuesday. "But her fame really is a story of our own media age."
Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has described Goody's plight as a "tragedy", adding: "Everyone who suffers cancer has the thoughts of me, and I think the whole country, over what they've got to go through." Exceptionally, Justice Secretary Jack Straw stepped in to ensure that Tweed, 21 -- freed from jail last month after attacking a teenager with a golf club -- can spend his wedding night with Goody, despite it breaching his bail terms.
Goody's rise to fame underlines the huge popularity that reality television shows have built up in Britain in the last decade. On her first "Big Brother" appearance, the ex-dental nurse from south London came fourth and was best known for her loud mouth and lack of general knowledge, referring to East Anglia, an area of England, as "East Angular." She later released an autobiography and her own perfume before returning as a contestant on "Celebrity Big Brother" in 2007.
This saw her spend weeks being filmed in a house with contestants including Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, who she referred to as "Shilpa Poppadom," sparking a major race row in Britain and India. Jane Goody's career subsequently nose-dived. Last year, she appeared in the Indian version of "Big Brother" -- "Bigg Boss" -- but pulled out after being diagnosed with cancer.
Shetty has said she is "sad" about the news, telling ITV television Thursday: "I really want people to forget the past and I really want them to pray and send her good wishes because that's something that will give her energy."
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