Jade Goody, the British reality TV star whose battle against cancer had been followed around the world, has died.She passed away in her sleep early Sunday – Mother's Day in the U.K.
Max Clifford, her publicist and friend, confirmed the news to PEOPLE. "She had been pretty much asleep for the last 24 hours," he says, adding she died "just before 4 o'clock this morning."
Her husband Jack Tweed – who she married in a ceremony filmed by a British TV channel in February – and mother Jackiey Budden were at her bedside, Clifford adds.
Clifford says Budden told him, "My beautiful daughter has gone to sleep, has gone," when they spoke soon afterwards.
He adds, "Jackiey is obviously as you would expect a mom to be at the loss of her daughter. We've all known it was coming but she's devastated."
Goody, 27, rose to fame on the British version of the reality show Big Brother in 2002, and was rarely out of the British newspapers and gossip magazines in the years that followed. But her story went global when she discovered she was suffering from cervical cancer – while appearing on the India version of the reality show in August.
