Jade Goody Donates to Indian Charities
Jade Goody, the British reality show contestant who made headlines for racially abusing Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty, said on Tuesday she would donate all her Big Brother earnings to charities for poor Indian children.
Jade Goody, who arrived in India on Monday on what she said was a private four-day visit, danced with impoverished beggar children in the slums of New Delhi earlier on Tuesday in what is seen as an attempt to rehabilitate her tarnished image.
“I was an underprivileged child, but nothing like the children that I’ve met today,” she told a hectic news conference at a deluxe hotel in the Indian capital, where organizers put up a cordon around her platform.
“They were inspirational,” she added, saying that the deep poverty of children who spend their days begging at railway stations put the problems she was having with her stalled career as a tabloid celebrity in perspective.
“All the money I’ve earned from Big Brother … everything that is connected to Big Brother will be donated to charity,” she said, describing those earnings as “dirty money.”
She did not say how much the earnings were, but said $50,000 had already been given to one charity.
Goody also apologized to Indians who had been hurt by her behavior on the British television show Celebrity Big Brother.
Footage of her screaming abuse at Shilpa Shetty was broadcast widely on Indian cable news channels last month, sparking a furor, and led the Indian government to ask Britain if race laws had been violated.
The Indian mission in London saw the row as an opportunity to promote tourism and placed tongue-in-cheek advertisements in British newspapers asking Goody to visit India and see its people for herself.
But Goody said she had paid for her trip and would not be meeting any officials.
“I’ve said sorry back at home a number of times and I haven’t had the opportunity to say it to the Indian community, and I am so sorry for the hurt and pain my actions caused,” she said, dressed in a white T-shirt and brown corduroy trousers.
She said the show had taught her that things she had not considered racist were, in fact, racist.
Goody, who originally found fame in Britain on an earlier series of Big Brother, said she had been told she was invited to Shilpa Shetty’s Mumbai home, but she could not make it because of her charity commitments.
“But in the near future I’d like to meet Shilpa Shetty if the offer’s still open,” she said.
Goody said she would spend all her time in India visiting charities, adding that she had not packed her bikini for the trip.