Jade Goody’s dying wish after cervical cancer diagnosis ‘has been denied’

TEN years on from the death of his wife Jade Goody, Jack Tweed’s face is etched in pain as he reveals how “devastated” the Big Brother legend would be with the way things have turned out.

Her husband does not just remain grief-stricken, but angry too. Angry that he effectively raised her two children but has been denied the chance to care for them since her death.

Angry that the money Jade worked so hard to earn didn’t even grant her final wish to fund both children through private school.

And angry at the NHS for misdiagnosing the love of his life, causing her to be taken from him when she was just 27.

Jack, who is now 31 and single, has not spoken publicly about Jade for many years but, as he prepares to mark a decade since she died of cervical cancer, he is ready to finally speak out about what really happened.

First and foremost, he is despondent that the funds Jade tried desperately hard to raise for her children’s education in the months before her death have come to nothing, due to much of her legacy being lost to the taxman.

He says: “It would have broken Jade if she’d known. She’d be devastated. I’ve never been able to get my head round it — the person’s dead.

“I don’t want to accuse anyone because I don’t know the full story but something doesn’t seem right. Something doesn’t add up.”

Jade set up several lucrative media deals in the days before her death and insisted that the money earned should be used to pay for her children to attend a private school.

However, The Sun revealed in 2011 that Jade’s fortune was nearly wiped out by massive debts amounting to £1.8million because Jade had paid no income tax for four years before she died. And, in 2013, we told how her estate would not be able to afford school fees beyond that year.

However, while Bobby, 15, has since remained in private education in Essex, Freddie, 14, is now at a state school after he struggled to fit in at his private school due to his ADHD.

Jack says: “I probably should have been more involved with the money situation, seeing where it all went and making sure the kids got it and it didn’t get wasted by anyone.

“But it didn’t feel right for me to get involved in that at the time.

“I thought, ‘My wife’s died, I don’t care about the money, it just doesn’t make a difference’.”

Looking back, he recalls: “We got over a million from OK! magazine for the wedding and Jade insisted on me having half of everything we done.

“So I just ended up giving it all to the trustees for them to pay for the kids’ school fees up until they were 18. I don’t even think they’re even in private education now to be honest.”

And he insists: “I didn’t take a penny from her. Nothing. She was lying in the hospital bed trying to buy me a flat. I told her no.

“She wanted to make sure I was alright. She knew I was young. She knew I loved her to absolute pieces. And she knew if she wasn’t there I wouldn’t know what to do.”

Before our interview, Jack visited Jade’s grave just around the corner from his house in Upshire, Essex. He’ll do the same on the tenth anniversary of her death.

He explains: “I go there every couple of weeks and put some flowers down and sit down on my own. Sometimes I have a little cry thinking about it, but I’ll try not to.”

Jack has only seen Bobby and Freddie once since their father Jeff Brazier banned him from seeing the children in 2009, as his life spiralled out of control following Jade’s death and he ended up in prison. But Jack says: “I brought them up for four years. Jeff used to only be around once a month for the weekend.

“I was the father figure in their life and I did everything with them. I was probably with them even more than Jade because she was working a lot and I just done everything. I loved them like they was my own.”

In fact, Jack reveals today that Jade wanted him to formalise his arrangement with her children before her death.

He explains: “She wanted me to adopt the kids, she wanted them to live with me but obviously I said, ‘I can’t, Jeff’s their dad and I’m not going to stand in the way. It’s not fair on Jeff’.”

Jack, who married Jade a month before her death in 2009, finds the narrative hard to accept that he was dastardly and Jeff a hero.

He says: “Jeff wasn’t around at the start when she was ill. He didn’t even want to pick up the kids. My friends were going to pick them up because Jade would ring them up crying because Jeff was just hard work.”

Jack has had no grief counselling to cope with Jade’s loss and now admits he didn’t handle anything in the right way, especially in the immediate aftermath of her death. He says: “She was my life. It was just Jade and the kids. Then Jade went, then the kids went straight away, and I was left with nothing.”

Jack started drinking too much and was even accused of rape, for which he was later cleared. It saw him sent to prison as he was out on licence for a previous offence.

He was grieving while being locked up in a segregation cell which meant he was on his own for 23-and-a-half hours each day.

“I was a mess,” he admits. “I remember when I got in there I didn’t move for about seven days. I didn’t shower, I was dirty.”

Did you ever consider what Jade would think, I ask? “Yeah, that was non-stop going through my head. She would have hated me, hated the situation, hate the whole thing.”

However, Jack has now become a builder and works hard from 6.30am every day for an honest living, something he knows Jade would have been happy about.

“The last four years she would have been proud because I’ve sorted myself out,” he says.

“To be honest it could have gone a lot worse. I could have ended up dead. So I’m proud of myself that I’ve got to how I am now.”

Jack hopes the public will finally change their view of him, especially as he has agreed to be part of a landmark Channel 4 series marking the anniversary of Jade’s death.

He explains: “I just disappeared and everyone hated me and I was a bad person and Jeff was this hero and some saint. It was horrible.

“I don’t care about people thinking that I’m a hero because I’m not. I’m just a normal person whose wife was ill and I looked after her.

“But what did I do wrong to deserve a load of abuse? I wasn’t with her to steal money off her.”

Jeff has allowed Jack to see the children once since he turned his life around, but only with other people present.

Jack recalls: “My mum and dad was there and Jeff came, too. It was a couple of years ago now.

“It was so nerve-wracking. I’d rather have seen them on my own to be honest without everyone there because I’m a shy person.

“I struggled with showing my real emotions when other people were there and so it didn’t go as well as I wanted it to but it was nice.

“They’re great kids. They’ve grown up a lot, they remind me of Jade so much. I’ve given them some pictures that they obviously hadn’t seen. And I still talk to them on Instagram every now and again, they still message me.”

Jack is appealing to be allowed to be more involved with Freddie and Bobby, saying: “What I’d love to do is have my own time with them.

“And just chat with them for a few hours because we went on so many funny holidays that no one even knows about.”

As for the future, Jack remains single but says he would “love” his own kids. But he adds, sadly: “It just doesn’t come into my head because who would I have a kid with?”

But, I prompt him, Jade would have wanted you to be happy.

He nods then says: “Yeah she said before she died, ‘I want you to move on, don’t think you can’t move on, I want you to move on straight away.’ She just wanted me to be happy. That was it, just be happy.

"She wanted me to be in the kids’ life, make sure the kids are all right and to be happy, that was it.”

But, he adds, as tears well up in his eyes and he puts his head in his hands: “I don’t think I’ll get over it because I don’t think you can.

“I’m not going to not miss her. I’m never going to forget about her. I’m always going to think about her. I’m always going to regret her not being here.

“If I say it ruined my life, it’s like making it about me. I don’t like saying that, but it did.

“Yeah, it did mess me up. I was a 21-year-old kid and she was the world to me and just got dragged away.

“But I don’t want Jade’s legacy to ever be forgotten.”