It was Jade Goody’s bid to grasp what joy remained in the final days of her life.
Stricken with cervical cancer, she bravely decided to get married to Jack Tweed in a lavish Essex ceremony in 2009, despite being told eight days earlier that her illness was terminal.
Surrounded by tearful family – including her sons, five-year-old Bobby and four-year-old Freddy from her relationship with Jeff Brazier – and friends, the 27-year-old beamed as she walked down the aisle to her groom, then 21, in a £3,500 ivory silk gown by the designer Manuel Mota for luxury bridal label Pronovias.
It was indeed a beautiful ceremony – if tinged with an awful lot of sadness. The boys climbed onto Jade’s lap in one particularly touching moment. Ten white doves were released as the bride signed the marriage certificate.
Yet almost two decades later, in a shocking turn of events, Jade’s last moments of happiness have been swept up in the unedifying wake of Olivia Attwood’s ‘marriage’ scandal.
Ten days ago I revealed that Attwood’s glitzy nuptials with footballer Bradley Dack had never been legally binding and had not been a real marriage in the eyes of the law.
In other words, the Love Island star’s marriage at a Knightsbridge hotel was a sham, even though the ceremony was portrayed as entirely authentic on the ITV2 reality show, Olivia Marries Her Match – a project which netted her a healthy payout.
Now, in a development described by one industry insider as ‘disgusting’, the validity of Jade Goody’s marriage has also come under scrutiny.
I can now reveal that the late Big Brother star is at the centre of a probe launched by independent production companies, which are said to be combing their back catalogues to scrutinise all marriages aired on television to check their validity.
Jade Goody and Jack Tweed on their wedding day. She walked down the aisle in an ivory silk gown by the designer Manuel Mota for Pronovias
Jade’s wedding at the lavish Down Hall Country House Hotel in Essex was screened on Living TV – which has since been bought by Sky – in a two-hour special produced by Granada Media North, an arm of ITV. She had also sold the exclusive rights to the ceremony to OK! Magazine for £700,000.
Ten days after Jade’s Wedding aired, in the early morning of March 22, 2009, the girl from Bermondsey died in her sleep at home in Essex.
Sources at Granada Media North said they are worried about being caught up in a ‘fake wedding’ row of their own and that, since Attwood’s ceremony was exposed, they have set about checking the fine print of Jade’s big day, too.
TV insiders tell me: ‘Production companies are calling around to ask those involved in making Jade’s wedding if it was legitimate and not a sham. They want to know that the wedding was real and not fake like Olivia’s.
‘They are being asked to double-check under what circumstances the marriage took place in the broadcast and if that was made clear.
‘To have Jade Goody’s marriage questioned because of Olivia’s mistakes is disgusting. The circumstances were completely different.
‘Olivia was trying to get cash for personal gain, Jade was doing it for her boys as a parting gift.’
Jade, who died on Mother’s Day, had been determined to ‘make as much money as possible for [her] sons’.
Olivia, 34, ‘married’ her footballer boyfriend, who plays for League Two team Gillingham, in a gaudy 2023 ceremony at the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge. She wore a £30,000 gown by the Israeli designer Galia Lahav, and beamed as she walked down the aisle arm-in-arm with her father Kai. At one point, the groom began to cry.
Jade and Jack married in a lavish Essex ceremony in 2009, despite Jade being told eight days earlier that her illness was terminal
Jade’s sons, Bobby, then five, and Freddy, then four climbed onto her lap during the ceremony, which was screened on Living TV
Three years later, The Mail on Sunday revealed that the couple knew the five-star hotel didn’t have a wedding licence and ‘planned’ to get legally married six weeks later in Cheshire.
But this never happened, despite the pair maintaining the illusion they were husband and wife.
Then, last month, Olivia was pictured kissing her KissFM co-host, Pete Wicks in a Soho bar, just weeks after announcing she was ‘divorcing’ Dack, 32.
My insider explains: ‘It’s chaos. Bosses are terrified because, at the time of Olivia’s show and before, celebrities were told that in order to get commissioned for a series, it was either “get married or have a baby”. The wedding is obviously the easier option.
‘Now they are doing their due diligence and making sure that they are not caught out again.’
ITV executives are said to be ‘furious’ as they had invested heavily in Attwood, who found fame on the 2017 series of dating show Love Island. They hoped to mould her into the network’s new Golden Girl, and she was tipped to be the next Holly Willoughby.
Olivia Attwood’s wedding to footballer Bradley Dack in 2023 was never legally binding, yet it was filmed for the ITV2 reality show Olivia Marries Her Match
Olivia Attwood wed footballer Bradley Dack at the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge, wearing a £30,000 gown by the Israeli designer Galia Lahav
Viewers of the ITV ‘wedding special’ watched the lovebirds sign a piece of paper after delivering their vows – with Dack’s best friend Ronnie Vint and Olivia’s younger brother Max acting as witnesses. But the ceremony has not been logged with the General Register Office, the archive of all marriages and civil partnerships for England and Wales.
Friends of Olivia attempted to explain why she had misled her viewers into believing she was married.
One pal said: ‘Despite her best efforts, the wedding planner was unable to turn [a wedding-certified venue] around in time so an appointment was made six weeks after the ceremony to complete the paperwork at a registry office near their home in Cheshire.
‘During these six weeks, Olivia uncovered a number of mistruths, which put a stall on following through with the paperwork.’
The friend added that, although the pair were together (on and off) for more than a decade and were both very much in love, ultimately Olivia was unable to agree to a legally binding union.
For the past three years, the couple have kept up the illusion on podcasts and television that they are husband and wife, with Olivia adding ‘Dack’ to the end of her professional name – which she has since removed from her social media pages.
The discovery of the deception is a blow for ITV, which has promoted Olivia across major television shows including Loose Women. She had a brief stint on This Morning last year.
Jade Goody and Jack Tweed’s wedding is now at the centre of a probe launched by independent production companies which are said to be combing their back catalogues to check the validity of the marriages aired on television
Jade, who died on Mother’s Day in 2009, with her sons Bobby and Freddy three years earlier
Dack also appeared on Loose Women and told host Coleen Nolan he wasn’t nervous about performing on screen because ‘we got married on camera’.
Elsewhere, Olivia had been given three ITV documentaries to present including Getting Filthy Rich, The Price Of Perfection and Olivia Attwood vs The Trolls.
Sources told the Daily Mail that executives are furious about the revelations and have refused to confirm Attwood’s long-term future at the corporation.
An insider said she is being allowed to continue as the presenter of her current show ‘for now’.
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