London - The funeral procession for former reality TV-star Jade Goody, who died aged 27 in March following her televised battle with cancer, began Saturday in London.

Thousands of people have gathered at the church in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, in south-east England, where Goody is to be buried.

Earlier crowds lined the streets in the larger-than-life star's home London borough of Bermondsey, as the funeral cortege passed through.

Onlookers threw flowers at the black hearse as it travelled through the streets where Goody grew up.

Goody first became famous on the 2002 series of Big Brother, where her loud-mouthed antics and lack of education shocked viewers.

But she became even more notorious in 2007, when - invited back onto Celebrity Big Brother - she made racist remarks to Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, attracting 45,000 complaints from viewers.

She later appeared on the Indian version of Big Brother as a form of penance - and there received the news live on air that she had cervical cancer.

Never off the newspaper front pages in Britain, she made a fortune from her autobiography - recounting her harsh childhood with a jailed father - and a perfume range.

Helped by her publicist Max Clifford, she sold the right for her wedding - by which time she was bald from the chemotherapy - for 700,000 pounds (750,000 euros).

On Saturday Clifford told the BBC the funeral would be "a very Jade Goody event."

"The whole service is very much the way Jade wanted it," he said. (dpa)