Jade Goody, undoubtedly one of the UK’s most hated celebrities, was diagnosed with cervical cancer this week. She learned the news while living inside India’s Big Brother house, but will leave the show immediately to undergo surgery in London.

Jade’s spokesman said: “She is devastated. It is a terrible thing to be told you have cancer. She broke down while she was on air and told some of the other housemates she had some bad news and had to go home. When I spoke to her she was very upset, frightened and I tried to reassure her as best I could.

“It looks like her cancer is at an early stage but we will have to wait until she gets back to Britain and sees a specialist and has more tests.”

While cervical cancer has an 83 per cent survival rate, it kills more than 800 women each year and is the second most common form of the disease for women under 35 after breast cancer.

Jade had entered the Bigg Boss house after undergoing tests at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Essex after her third cancer scare and following four mystery collapses earlier this month.

But just three days after entering the house, she was told the devastating news yesterday by a specialist from the UK who was patched through to the Diary Room to speak to her.

A source said: “She was called into the Diary Room and spoke to her agent and then her consultant in the UK. She just burst into tears, ran out and said to housemates ‘I have cancer.’”

Jade did some serious career damage while appearing on the UK’s Celebrity Big Brother last year, after she referred called housemate Shilpa Shetty a “dog,” and various other racial slurs. Shilpa, a Bollywood star, said she forgave Jade for the slurs, and invited her to appear on Indian Big Brother as a way to repair help repair her image.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Jade Goody. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.