A NEW documentary celebrating the life, spirit and incredible work of Dame Deborah James is airing tonight.
Dame Deborah James: The Last Dance is on BBC One at 8.30pm and sees the Sun columnist’s friends and loved ones pay tribute to her.
Trending In The News writer and cancer campaigner died on Tuesday at the age of 40, but not before she raised millions of pounds for charity, all in a matter of weeks.
The half-hour show – which is already available to watch on BBC iPlayer – tells Deborah’s story, from when she was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer just before Christmas in 2016, through to her final weeks when Prince William made her a Dame and she launched the Bowelbabe Fund, which has raised almost £7million for Cancer Research.
Brits are being encouraged to get the fundraiser past the £10 million mark this weekend.
In The Last Dance we hear from Deborah’s You, Me and the Big C pals and podcast hosts, Lauren Mahon and Steve Bland, as well as celebrity friends Lorraine Kelly, Gaby Roslin and George Alagiah, who share their memories of Debs and what she meant to them.
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And while it’s an emotional watch, Gaby Roslin says from the outset about Deborah that: “Cancer didn’t stop her having fun,” – and that laughter and joy is caught on camera.
The documentary captures Deborah’s early podcasting days, when she, Lauren and the late Rachael Bland, who died of breast cancer in 2018, put poo and cancer front and centre.
“We wanted to talk about cancer like it was EastEnders,” remembers Lauren.
It was that frankness and the desire to get rid of any embarrassment that made ITV’s Lorraine Kelly fall head over heels for Deborah.
She remembers how they were talking about bowels within moments of first meeting.
“All she wanted to do was get this message across, make sure nobody else went through the same as her, make sure everyone had the information they needed and stop people being stupid about their bottoms,” said Lorraine. “I thought, ‘You are a smasher.’”
The half hour doc is filled with footage of Deborah in her absolute element, dressed in her poo outfit that was meant for a six-year-old, and in glitzy dresses dancing her heart out – whether with her son Hugo, 14, or rigged up to a chemo pump, shimmying in hospital with her friend Emma Cambell.
Emma opens up about how she was “living in a permanent state of fear” after her breast cancer diagnosis, but Debs helped change that for her.
Emma said: “There is only one person who could ever get me to dance and that was Debs.”
She added: “The essence of Debs has always been that radiance, that lifeforce, that spirit.”
But The Last Dance is honest about Deborah’s cancer and the impact it had on her body.
Steve Bland, husband to Rachael, said: “Debs would get messages from people thinking she had it easy, they’d see her dancing – how could that person be dying, how could that person have incurable cancer? They didn’t understand how hard it was for her.”
