Picture this: a country in the grip of recession, its inhabitants reeling from the sense that they have all somehow unwittingly been shafted by the sitting government, and the one before, and the one before that and possibly the one before that too. Imagine a commuter train packed with Les ashen-faced Misérables, alighting in the great grey smoke to begin the slow march of the depressed penguins underground – reminiscent of SS-led prisoners of war facing certain death, only marginally better dressed. Examine a GP’s waiting room with shrunken patients exaggerating their sense of unwellness, their immediate fate in the hands of inadequate administration support; themselves beaten with an electronic appointment system with a mind of its own.

Depressed yet? Your imagination has created a canvas now littered with a multitude of done-tos. A populace unable to take responsibility for itself and never far from a catalogue of events, people or technologies to blame. Now isn’t that a calming feeling? To sit centre stage, blameless and irresponsible.

My work/life is miserable because of the train company, the Tube, my boss, the hours. My finances are broken because of Mr Brown, Mr Blair, Mr Major, Mr New Heals Catalogue. My children’s health is poor because the TV company puts too much salt into their diet and despite working within the public services, I am unable to be pleasant to any of those I serve, as the computer won’t allow me to look said clients in the eye and empathise.

Happy with your lot?

The death and resulting funeral furore of Jade Goody has once again given rise to the opportunity for the clowning masses to have their say. “She was one of us,” says Denise from Dagenham; “She achieved everything we never could,” growls toothless Tina from Tottenham, tramping all over the dry irony that Goody once earned her peanuts as a dental nurse. But in many ways I believe the subscribers to Take A Break and Loose Women to be right; ‘Our Jade’ was an everyman for our time. Embarrassing as it may be for the chattering educated classes that apparently don’t exist, Jade ’u’ likes are to be found in every West Street in every town on every Friday night, clamouring for their moment to be heard and drinking their way to A&E.

Jade had a dream and the land of reality TV allowed it to be played out. Crass as she was, she then began years of pushing as one dream after another led to the rise of yet another. When Jade Goody was picking her mother’s drug apparatus off the vomit-encrusted council-flat lino aged eight, she dreamt of a big house in Essex with fancy gates and the press following her every glamorous move – a princess for the noughties. We can mock her dream for being empty and devoid of intelligent ambition – we can even suggest that for a short time the dream became a nightmare – but Jade lived the dream that millions of girls like her in the Western world would kill for. Rather than your exploits landing you in A&E, they get you into News Of The World.

Chantelle (remember her?), shrouded in the land of Z-List celebs from the word go, even won a contest to beat the Z-list of them all. With an intelligence desert between her ears not witnessed on television since, well, Jade Goody, Chantelle, upon winning her temporary crown, announced to the watching millions that she was indeed “living the dream”. Like Goody-new-shoes before her, she didn’t stop at the Big Brother break; she even bagged herself a moody pop ‘star’ boyfriend/ husband and made a TV documentary about herself with the catchy title (you’re too good at this) Living The Dream.  

In the midst of their embarrassing public gaffes and for all their avid pointlessness, these two bimbettes, devoid of talent and purpose, simply followed a path well-trodden by the likes of Eva Perón and Madonna Ciccone-Penn-Ritchie-Malawi before them. They had a dream, took some measure of self-responsibility for swimming in pigshit, and got the fuck out.

But poor Jade! She probably didn’t ever take – or indeed have – the time to appreciate that our obsession with the front-page serialisation of her demise had precious little to do with Jade Goody. What we were sickened or fascinated by, glued to or even mourning was the passing of our pointless selves into an oblivion where we never even tried to live our dreams. Think of a world without celebrity flowers; you didn’t make Jade status but find yourself in the unfortunate position of Marjorie from Moulsecoomb. You have two kids but you’re never sure where they are until the police bring them home twice a week. You used to work in Woolworths but now you don’t and you are diagnosed with incurable cancer at the age of 29. What was the point? Really, really, what was the point?

Squatting in your depreciating physical stupor of commuter misery, angry, huffing, puffing the works (you know the one, if you’ve not been him, you’ve seen him) each time the train goes into a tunnel because your signal goes or it becomes too dark to read your free shitty newspaper, getting a migraine every night because your diet has the nutritional value of a bagel in Auschwitz – what is the point? Really, really, what is the point? 

We can judge and spit our bitter observations of stupid Jade from Bermondsey and I still do think her ‘career’ pointless, empty and at times unpleasant, but on her deathbed she knew she’d lived the dream.

What will you know?

Dream a little dream of yourself, and make it happen. You’re the only one who can. If Jade Goody can...