A convicted armed robber who died of a drug overdose for a father, a one-armed mother turned late-in-life lesbian, two children out of wedlock and a younger lover with an electronic tag. Jade Goody is a tabloid dream. Straight from a soap opera script, the poorly educated and slightly overweight dental nurse from south London gained a place in British celebrity culture aged 21 when she entered the reality television show Big Brother in 2002 and came out to find the Sun newspaper had run a campaign against her called "Vote the Pig Out".

She has lurched between making money - her perfume is a Superdrug bestseller and she has hosted several TV programmes - to becoming a figure of notoriety when a second entry into a Big Brother house saw her labelled a racist bully over her treatment of another contestant, Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. Her briefly rehabilitated popularity nosedived in the scandal, which drew statements from Gordon Brown and the Indian government.

The next chapter is now Goody and cancer. A diagnosis of cervical cancer brought the media spotlight back - she was "bravely battling back", and even the Daily Telegraph ran a post-chemotherapy photo of her bald head. Then last week the story became one of life and death: it seems that Jade Goody, 27, mother of two very young children, is dying.

Now she is not just tabloid fodder: love her, hate her or have never heard of her, Goody has taken the phenomenon of reality TV celebrity culture into a whole new sphere. Her life is played out publicly but now the debate is over whether her death should be. Goody, with the help of PR consultant Max Clifford, is making money.

"The reasons for her going public are threefold. First because she wants to be busy, and Jade achieves that by working - the busier she is the better," said Clifford. "Secondly she wants to make as much money as she possibly can because she has two kids to support, and the media is her way of making money. Thirdly, she has got the message out there - she wants to tell young women what happened to her. Jade is not an entertainer, Jade is what she is. She is always being herself even if other people don't see that."

Going public over cancer is a well-trodden path. Writers John Diamond, Martyn Harris and Ruth Picardie wrote extensively about their own terminal cancers. Diamond called himself Mr Celebrity Cancer, cheerfully admitting that for his readers he was writing a soap opera, and "they're hooked, as they may be to The Archers". He wrote a column in the Times and was attacked for "exploiting" and sensationalising his cancer when TV cameras followed him to the door of the operating theatre. He defended being "the man who has cancer for a living" by saying, "It seems reasonable that a man who makes his living writing about his life should carry on writing about it when that life gets interesting."

That was a sentiment echoed by Robert McCrum, author and the Observer's associate editor, who wrote an intimate account of suffering a near-fatal stroke at the age of 42. "I had a story to tell, a story moreover that made all the previous stories I'd told, in fact or fiction, seem, to me at least, pale and uninteresting by comparison. What's more, the telling of the story became an essential part of my long convalescence as I struggled to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened to me. I think telling stories to ourselves, whether you are Jade Goody or Susan Sontag, is a necessary part of the therapeutic process."

Oncology expert Professor Karol Sikora said he thought the more openness the better: "When I began in this field 32 years ago, doctors didn't even tell patients they had cancer. It's very much more honest now. Cancer patients often feel alone, and whether its Kylie Minogue or Jade Goody, the celebrity talking about their cancer can only help."

Thomas Muirhead of the Macmillan Cancer Support charity said it was a growing phenomenon for cancer sufferers to write about it on blogs or in chatrooms: "Even older people are adapting to the technology really quickly. The cancer journal is becoming very much part of the experience for people."

Whether or not Goody is really in control of what is being written about her, though, is debatable. One commentator last week called her a "victim" of reality TV culture - but you don't catch cancer from appearing on TV and Goody's future could not have been predicted when she first applied to enter the Big Brother house. But much of the oddly passionate hatred of her is still very much around. Bob Geldof's eldest daughter, Fifi, had to apologise last week after accusing Goody of "milking it" and there is a website called When Will Jade Goody Die? offering an Apple iPod as a prize for the person who predicts her date of death, and a Facebook group entitled Yay! Jade Goody Has Cancer.

The TV presenter Trisha Goddard, 51, has not only encouraged many ordinary people to talk publicly about their personal issues on her daytime TV chatshow; she has also found herself on the receiving end of unwelcome media attention when her efforts to keep her own cancer private failed.

"When I had my diagnosis there was no way I thought, 'Yippee, I can run out now and be inspirational.' If I could have kept it absolutely shtoom I would have, but it was leaked and I had to deal with journalists at my door and creeping around in my garden and it was a little scary.

"But I did give an interview and got as much as possible for it and gave it to two charities, but I could because I didn't need that money. But for Jade Goody, the only way she can make money is by being Jade Goody, so what choice does she have? All these people harping on about her dignity should remember that no bank manager writes saying 'Dear Ms Goddard or Dear Ms Goody, we've heard you have cancer so we won't be taking your mortgage this month.' I feel for her and I think there is a lot of snobbery around. You want her to keep her dignity? Sling her a quarter of a million then and she can close her front door.

"A lot of this is about class - it's all right for someone clever like John Diamond to write and be brave and self-deprecating, but who is this awful kid who wants to die on camera?"

But money aside there is still a responsibility that comes with publicity. Sam O'Driscoll is a 36-year-old mother-of-five who has followed Goody's story "step by step". She has the same consultant, Professor Martin Gore at the Royal Marsden Hospital.

"I was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the same time and had the same treatment at the same time," she says. "In Jade's circumstances, her outlook does not look good. I was given the all-clear in November because my cancer hadn't spread to my lymph nodes and they were able to remove all of it during surgery.

"I think what has upset me a lot about her coverage is that a lot of it has been misreported or the facts are just not right. I'm not sure whether this was ignorance on her part or the reporters - for example when Jade Goody was having her radical hysterectomy, this was apparently a 10- to 12-hour operation and she was in intensive care.

"This was reported a few weeks before I was due to go in for the same surgery and was told that the op was one to two hours long and I would be going on to a normal ward. That's exactly what happened, but the inaccurate information by the newspaper was enough to frighten me and doubt my surgeon's advice.

"I find the words 'brave' and 'battling' quite annoying: what Jade Goody is going through is what hundreds of women are going through every day and she is not any different to any of them - so why is she suddenly front-page headlines?

"I have hidden most of my illness from my young children and chosen to only show them what I think they can cope with. Are Jade's sons shielded from comments in the playground because their mum is plastered all over the paper?

"However, I do think it's good that young girls can see that this could happen to them and that it is important to be screened regularly."

Goody is still in shock over her prognosis and Clifford says he has not discussed with her at what moment the time would be right to "shut the door" on the press. "We'll just take it week by week," he said. "Already there are days when she doesn't have the energy for it. We'll be governed by Jade. At the moment there's an avalanche of support for her: that can all change, of course it can, and that is a risk, but then life at the moment is an incredible risk for Jade."

Rise and fall

June 1981 Jade Cerisa Lorraine Goody born in Bermondsey to a mixed-race father and white mother.

2001 Evicted from a council flat in Rotherhithe over £3,000 of unpaid rent.

2002 Wins a place on Big Brother, becoming notorious for her drunken nudity and ignorance.

2005 Her father, Andrew, dies of an overdose, aged 42. Splits with Jeff Brazier, the father of her two boys.

2006 Fails to finish the London marathon and is hospitalised. Her perfume outsells Kylie Minogue's.

January 2007 Enters Celebrity Big Brother and appears to bully Indian actress Shilpa Shetty.

August 2008 Appears on the Indian version of Big Brother, but withdraws when her cancer is diagnosed.

Christmas 2008 Plays the Wicked Queen in pantomime of Snow White, but again has to pull out due to ill health.