Jade was the perfect victim - Parky

The broadcaster - writing in the Radio Times days after the reality TV star's funeral - also claimed she was "the perfect victim of our times".

He wrote: "Jade Goody has her own place in the history of television and, while it's significant, it's nothing to be proud of."

And he added: "Her death is as sad as the death of any young person, but it's not the passing of a martyr or a saint or, God help us, Princess Di."

Parkinson went on: "When we clear the media smokescreen from around her death, what we're left with is a woman who came to represent all that's paltry and wretched about Britain today.

"She was brought up on a sink estate, as a child came to know both drugs and crime, was barely educated, ignorant and puerile.

"Then she was projected to celebrity by Big Brother and, from that point on, became a media chattel to be manipulated and exploited till the day she died."

The 74-year-old said it was not the fact that Goody became famous that was the problem.

"What bothers me is that the media first of all recommended we hate Jade Goody - "a slapper with a face like a pig", remember? - and shortly thereafter tried to persuade us to celebrate her." He said Goody was "the perfect victim of our times", adding that she "died to an orchestrated chorus of exploitation".

Goody, the mother of two sons, died on Mother's Day aged 27 after battling cervical cancer. Hundreds of fans lined the streets to pay their respects as her funeral procession made its way through the streets on Saturday.