When Living TV started filming with Jade Goody in summer for the fly-on-the-wall documentary ‘Living With Jade Goody’, what started as an insight into the life of one of the UK’s most famous reality TV stars became a video diary of her battle with cervical cancer.

Viewers at the time shared Jade’s pain as she bravely went on camera to give us the devastating full story of her illness. We left Jade as she was coming to terms with her disease, and about to have a radical hysterectomy. Now, for this new series, Jade is determined that her story be told in order to help educate other young women about cervical cancer.

I have to say, for many years, I’ve disliked Jade. I couldn’t stand her when she was on Big Brother and that was compounded when she was on Celebrity Big Brother so I didn’t watch the first series of her fly-on-wall films but when I watched this last night, I felt very differently about her.

I’d always believed she was just a loud mouthed rather thick young woman who hadn’t actually earned the fame that had brought her wealth and other good fortunes, rather that she’d come by then vicariously. However, seeing her being so brave and clearly being a very devoted mother changed my opinion of her totally.

During the programme, Jade repeatedly made mention of the fact that she has no intention of letting cancer beat her because she has so much to live for, most especially her sons, Bobby and Freddie. She tries to keep life as normal as possible for them and is doggedly determined to do the school runs and be there as any other mum would for them.

However, she’s enduring daily radiotherapy treatments and has to travel an hour each way for them. They leave her tired and having to cope with the discomfort of the slight burns and hypersensitivity of her skin afterwards. She gets sickness and diahorrea too which is exacerbated by the weekly chemotherapy treatments. She drives herself to hospital wherever possible and tries to get back home in time for her boyfriend Jack Tweedy’s calls from prison.

Jade has the most advanced form of cervical cancer for which the survival rate at three years is just 40%, a fact that must terrify her as she inevitably has to contemplate the fact that there’s a 60% chance she could die during those three years. It’s a horribly stark reality for someone who has two little children and the pressure of it, as well as the draining effects of her treatments, were apparent in the times she simply broke down.

But she tries not to stay down for too long and last night, we saw that she booked herself some pampering treatments at Champney’s to make herself feel better. By the time she was on the masseuse’s table, she was back to her lively fun self and afterwards, because she couldn’t be bothered to get dressed again, she snuck out of the spa with their dressing gown on, giggling like a schoolgirl.

A few days later though, Jade was again at rock bottom as she faced the chemotherapy treatment that she so dreads. Her friend, and producer of the programme Jane, came round to see she was ok because she hadn’t been answering her phone. She didn’t really want to see anyone but when her friend Danielle brought her toddler daughter Rosie over, Jade brightened up and played happily with the little girl.

However, Jade was feeling so ill that her chemo that day was postponed and instead, she stayed in the Royal Marsden for a week to build herself back up. While she was there, her mother Jackie stayed with the boys and Jade’s friend Kevin helped with the school runs and keeping the house in order.

Jade remarked that it was nice that her mum was finally being a mum to her and putting her – Jade – first for what was possibly the first time in their lives. And again, this made me think very differently of Jade; her mother has been a worse than useless mum but Jade hasn’t turned her back on her and has turned out to be an excellent mother herself, despite the woefully inadequate start she had in life.

And not only is Jade fighting hard to keep life as normal as possible at home, she’s also still working and we saw her attending a photo shoot with the boys for a magazine. They were riotous, as little boys are wont to be, and she handled them with love and patience.

We saw a glimpse of the Jade I remember well from BB though when she was ranting on the phone to her bank because they’d made some mistake with one of her accounts. She tried to use ‘big’ words and tried to sound authoritative but her limited vocabulary hindered her. Nonetheless, I had to smile when eventually, they hung up on her and she looked aghast at the phone. The old Jade’s still very much in there! And I’m very glad that she is.

She’s a very brave young woman who, despite facing something that women everywhere dread, is doing so with good humour, stoicism and a fighting spirit that I sincerely hope gets her through this.