A BBC documentary tribute to Deborah James left viewers ‘sobbing’ after showing emotional family moments – including her dancing with her son and reacting with delight when her fundraising page reached £1million.
Dame Deborah James: The Last Dance followed the mother-of-two’s five-year battle with stage four bowel cancer – which she sadly lost on Tuesday – through the eyes of friends who supported her.
The 30-minute program also included personal moments the late campaigner shared with her family – such as her reaction to her Bowelbabe fundraising page reaching £1m, treatment and dancing with her son Hugo, 14, to ‘ The story of beauty and the beast since the olden days’ time.
Deborah, a former vice-principal and mother to Hugo and 12-year-old Eloise with her husband Sebastian Bowen, was diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer in 2016. She lost her battle with cancer on Tuesday, her family said after weeks of receiving care at the end of his life at his parents’ home in Surrey.
She set up the Bowelbabe Fund to raise awareness and fund clinical trials and research into personalized medicine – and originally hoped to raise £250,000. On Wednesday night she reached the £7m milestone after donations increased in hours after her death.
The activist’s closest friends led the emotional tribute to her in the documentary. Cancer campaigner Lauren Mahon, 37, who presented You, Me and the Big C on the BBC with Deborah and their late friend Rachel Bland, broke down, saying: “I just love her so much.”
TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, who supported Dime Deborah’s cancer awareness campaigns, called her late friend a “heartbreaker” and said he would always “bounce back” which made her death so “hard” to accept.
A heart-wrenching BBC documentary in tribute to Dame Deborah James left viewers ‘hiccuping’ after showing emotional family moments – including her dancing with her son (pictured) and reacting with delight when her fundraising page reached £ 1 million
In one of the family videos shown on the programme, Deborah is seen dancing with her young son shortly after being diagnosed in 2016 (pictured)
The 30-minute program also included her reaction to her Bowel Babe fundraising page reaching £1 million (above)
Cancer campaigner Lauren Mahon, 37, who presented the BBC’s You, Me and the Big C with Deborah and their late friend Rachel Bland, broke down, saying: “I just love her so much.”
TV presenter Lorraine Kelly, who supported Dime Deborah’s cancer awareness campaigns, called her late friend “heartbreaking” and said she would always “bounce back” which made her death so “hard” to accept
Deborah James: The Last Dance retraces the mum-of-two’s battle with stage four bowel cancer through the eyes of the friends who supported her
Viewers were moved to tears as they watched the documentary, with one person saying: “A heartbreaking watch and a beautiful tribute to a beautiful man. I’ll miss.
“Just watched Deborah James: The Last Dance. I’m sobbing. She was such an amazing person. What an inspiration. Life can be so cruel,” another person wrote on Twitter.
During the programme, Lauren Mahon and Steve Bland, Rachel’s widower, were overcome with emotion as they remembered their ‘best friend’ and said they were ‘incredibly grateful to have had her at all’.
Wiping away tears, Lauren made a heartfelt plea to continue raising money for cancer research because “we can’t lose any more Debs.”
“Being in a relationship with people with cancer is really hard because you lose people,” Lauren said as she cried. “There’s people and there’s Deborah, and I can’t help but be incredibly grateful to have had her at all.”
She added that she wanted the activist to see what she meant to “so much.” “I just love her so much. We have to keep raising money because we can’t lose any more Debs,” she said.
Reaction: Social media users took to Twitter today to say they were left in tears by the emotional program
Steve Bland, who lost his wife Rachel to breast cancer in 2018, said Deborah was one of his best friends, a ‘brilliant mum’, pictured left, as Lauren Mahon wept as she said she loved Deborah and that having friendships with people with cancer is “really hard,” photo right
After sharing her experiences of living with the disease on social media, Deborah became known as ‘The Gut Baby’ and in 2018 joined Lauren Mahon and Rachel Bland to present the award-winning podcast You, Me and the Big C on Radio 5 Live
Deborah (pictured far left with Lauren Mahon and right with her brother and his fiancee) was turned into a woman by the Duke of Cambridge at her family home, and William praised her for “going above and beyond to do very special memory’
Remembering her friend, with whom she co-hosted the BBC’s You, Me and the Big C podcast, Lauren said: “Deb just has this ferocity in her to make a difference and make sure no one else suffers of the same fate.
“Most people would just run away from it, but Deb wanted to tell her story so it wasn’t anyone else’s story. I’m really proud that we’re now talking about bums and poo on every channel.
Lorraine Kelly, who met Deborah during her campaign and launched the No Butts campaign with her, also remembered her friend.
“I was looking at someone with stage four bowel cancer. She was absolutely flawless, always had been. beautiful hair and makeup and perfect,” she said.
“And I couldn’t believe I was with a live-in girl.
On May 9, the mother-of-two shared a heartbreaking ‘goodbye’ message to her 470,000 Instagram followers, revealing she had been moved into hospice care at home while being ‘surrounded by family’ because ‘my body is just’ playing ball
“All she wanted to do was get that message out, make sure no one else went through the same thing she did, make sure everyone had the information they needed and stop people from they’re being silly about their asses,” she added.
“That struck me.” We started talking about butt and poo probably 45 seconds after we met and I really just thought, “I really like you, you’re my type of woman, you’re a crush.”
“What’s so hard is that she always bounced back and I always thought she would.
“And it was very difficult because we just always thought she was going to be here,” the host added.
Resilience: Deborah James pictured with her mother Heather James two months ago after one of her latest operations
Deborah has made the most of her time in recent weeks by taking days out, which have been grueling due to her condition. However, she has remained positive and posted how much she enjoys outings such as the one at Royal Ascot
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- In December 2016, the mother-of-two from West London, a deputy headteacher, was diagnosed ‘late’ with incurable bowel cancer
- After sharing her experience of living with the disease on social media, Deborah became known as ‘The Gut Baby’
- In 2018, she became one of three presenters on Radio 5 Live’s You, Me and the Big C, which was conceived by her late co-presenter Rachel Bland
- On 5 September 2018, Welsh journalist and presenter Bland, diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, died aged 40
- Deborah and her co-host Lauren Mahon continued to present the show, with the duo joined by Steve Bland, Rachel’s husband
- On social media and in her column for The Sun newspaper, Deborah has documented the many chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgeries she has had since then
In 2018, Deborah (left) joined Lauren Mahon (front) and Rachel Bland (right) to present the award-winning podcast You, Me and the Big C on Radio 5 Live
- In 2019, she had a procedure known as CyberKnife, a highly targeted form of radiotherapy to attack an inoperable lymph node near her liver
- The impact of the pandemic on cancer services has seen her campaign for care continue as business as usual and earlier this year she launched Lorraine’s ITV No Butts campaign, raising awareness of the symptoms of bowel cancer
- Since last year, she has been taking new experimental drugs as part of a trial after her oncology team gave her the go-ahead to do so
- Deborah revealed in August that scans she had in recent days showed her cancer had gone “in the wrong direction very quickly”
- She told her followers she would be taking a break from social media over the weekend to “snuggle up” with her family before more scans
- The mother-of-two said a new “fast-growing” tumor near her liver had wrapped around her bowel
- Deborah celebrated her 40th birthday on October 1st
- By October 18, the mother of two told her followers that her chemotherapy was working
- Days later she was rushed to the ER with “high temperatures of 40 degrees”
- She revealed in November that she can’t walk for more than 20 minutes and remains ‘very weak’
- By December, Deborah said she was ‘not sure what her options were’ after her liver stent ‘stopped working’
- In January, she underwent five operations in 10 days after nearly dying in an acute medical emergency
- On January 25, Deborah returned home from the hospital after three weeks
- On March 14, the mother of two was back in hospital as an inpatient after suffering from a septic infection
- In April, she teased fans with photos after suffering a ‘rough few days’
- On April 14, the mother of two told fans she had been released from the hospital, but called the situation “very difficult”
- On April 27, she told Lorraine Kelly that she spent “80 percent” of the year in hospital
- On May 9, Deborah announced that she had moved into hospice care
Steve Bland, who lost his wife Rachel to triple negative breast cancer in September 2018, was also among those who remembered her in the emotional film.
‘She is one of the…
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